CAPtions

When the Moments Swell Larger Than Life

2012-02-16T09:58:00.000-06:00

The ancient Celtic notion of "thin places" is increasingly recognized -- those specially evocative locations where the membrane separating heaven and earth seems breathtakingly thin. We resonate with the idea because we have stood in such places. For my Mother heaven draws near along virtually any beach with their almost hypnotic and undulating intersection of surf and sand thresholding an endless expanse of horizon. For others it is the golf course and interplay of tree and bunker and fareway and green. For me it is the mountains -- sun-splashed hillsides of vertical palettes; moist and musty trails illuminated by dappled light squeezing around leafy canopies above. If Vermont in autumn isn't heaven itself, it is at the very least a place incredibly, heavenly thin. We return to such places year after year for their predictable and reliable renewal.

But my guess is that more common, but less commonly named, are "thin moments" -- experiential episodes when the breath of heaven breezes through quite by surprise. The key unlocking the door may be a passage of music or a flash of insight or a baby's coo or the silent fall of moonlit snow or a puppy's nuzzling sleep. Since moving to the country the staring face of deer just out our window causes me to stop and be almost absorbed into their steady gaze. Nourishing moments in which we cannot remain forever nor to which we can reliably return, but which reach out into the grandly normal and, catching us by surprise, feed us with awe. Such moments may not happen often, but often enough, I suppose, to sustain us with the memory, and often enough to keep us looking; keep us hoping that some such thing might happen again.

Talking with colleagues about the familiar story of Jesus' Transfiguration, we noted all the usual clues and typical lessons -- the foreshadowing of Jesus' glorification; the alignment with heroes of the past; the white garment of martyrdom; the identifying voice of God. I wouldn't dispute the significance of any of those clues, but if any of this report actually happened my guess is that the gift of it for those who chanced to be along was less the details of the symbolism involved and more the simple and arresting power of the moment. As with any mountaintop experience, the value is less in what you learn in your head and more what you digest in your soul. And something about such episodic spiritual food, served in such thin moments, keeps us going.

When I mentioned that it is a little like golf, in which even the rare and occasional birdie is enough to keep the golfer coming back, one of my friends replied with the wry observation that "we are cheaply bought." It doesn't take much to keep us happy.

I'm not sure he meant it as a compliment, but I somehow think I'm grateful for the truth of his words.
A red leaf.
A perfect snowflake.
The softness of a kiss.
The lilt of a doe.
The roll of a wave.
The familiar pungence of cumin sprinkled into the simmering pot.
A full moon on a snowy, cloudless night.
"I love you."

It doesn't take much to keep me going.

Because it Doesn't Take Much to Get Off Track

2012-02-01T17:07:00.002-06:00

Other than the obvious and stated reason, I don't know why he went. According to the Gospel of Mark, After Jesus had spent a little time casting out bad spirits and healing the ill he got up, "early in the morning, while it was still very dark...and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed" (1:35).

It could, of course, be that Mark was simply setting Jesus up as a model for spiritual disciplines. "Start the day off with prayer." Perhaps; but Mark never otherwise seems to shy away from inserting explanatory notes when he senses a reasonable chance that his audience could miss the point. If he was telling the story merely to encourage a habit, he likely would have said so -- "this was done in order to encourage his disciples to do the same"or some such clarification.

I am rather inclined to suspect that something else was going on -- like the possibility that Jesus needed to go out to this deserted place because Jesus needed what he suspected he could find there. He had been there, after all, just a short time before. Only a handful of verses earlier Jesus had been driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. There he had faced into his own demons, so to speak; clarifying and purifying his motives and distilling his guiding principles. There, one might say, he went about the sacred physics of establishing his center of gravity. And now here he is, back there again.

Which reminds me that it doesn't take much to get off track. A pebble can send the wheel into a ditch. One potato chip tends to lead to another, and another... Have a few successes and, if you aren't careful, you start believing your own publicity. Never mind that his story, according to Mark, has barely begun; Jesus has already generated a tornado of intrigue and acclaim. "The whole city," according to the story, "gathered around the door" of the house where he was staying. Heady. Giddy. "They have sought me ought!" he must have thought for a moment. "I must really be something!" I can't help but think that during the night Jesus realized that he could benefit from a remedial trip to the wilderness -- a little gyroscopic realignment of the soul; reassessing which end is up.

And the wilderness seems to be the place where that most commonly happens -- away from the clamor; away from the seductive acclaim; out where it isn't the adoring crowds catering to your whims, but the very angels themselves attending to your deepest needs.

Because even Jesus had need to get his head together. Twice, apparently, in the very first chapter.

I take some encouragement from that; and whether or not Mark actually intended it, some compelling example.

How About a Nice Sky Blue?

2012-01-24T11:31:00.001-06:00

The problem, of course, is identification. The reading suggested this week from the Hebrew scriptures listens in on a portion of the briefing given to the people of Israel about the days ahead of them. "Do this; don't do that. etc." It is cast as a sort of tutorial on how to live and what to expect when they eventually settle into their destination. And, in what strikes me as a prescient anticipation of the kind of eventual ambiguity that can lead either into mischief or paralysis, the people are told that "God will raise up for you a prophet...from among your own people. I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak...everything I command" (Deuteronomy 18:18).

Great! We can all relax now.

Except, wait! How will we know him? Or her? We are surrounded by people -- all kinds of people -- claiming the voice of truth. They only problem is that they don't seem to agree on what that "truth" is. Which helps explain how it is that we have been down this road countless times before -- listening to one after another of those "truths" that promised to lead us out of the woods, only to find ourselves deeper into the thicket. The current crop of Presidential contenders comes to mind; as does that bicameral brothel known as the United States Congress that seems unable to recognize a point of principal that isn't written on the back of a significant campaign contribution.

Authentic prophets, it turns out, don't wear fluorescent jump suits, carry indisputable credentials in their wallet, or garner the highest number of votes. Or poll ratings. And they usually don't seek out the camera...or votes.

In fact, if I read the record right they are usually the ones who find themselves, typically against their own wishes, telling us what we don't want to hear. This being a democratic society, we typically opt not to hear it, opting to drop another quarter in the jukebox and make a different selection. If we are in a church when we hear what we would rather not hear, we simply change churches. If we are listening to the radio or watching television we simply change the channel. "Fair and Balanced", after all, is really in the ear of the beholder; commonly defined as "does it agree with what I already believe."

That's the problem with voluntary associations: we typically choose to voluntarily associate with whatever it is or whoever it is that validates my previously held conceptions.

Which makes "speaking the word of the Lord" a pretty dicey business, unless God has previously taken a poll and determined in advance what the "truth" of the Lord ought to be. Alternatively, on the off-chance that people really would like to know the mind of God if only we could reliably identify the messenger, maybe God should consider that whole florescent jumpsuit idea.

As long as it isn't orange. I mean, you know how I feel about orange. How, after all, could you take seriously a prophet wearing a florescent orange jump suit?

The Wind and Snow and Anticipated Embrace of Winter

2012-01-17T11:55:00.000-06:00

There is something cozy about the winter. I know, it is a coziness that comes with a price. The wind, just now, is howling, blowing the new-fallen snowflakes like swirling and looping paper airplanes. It is, I know from puppy breaks outside, bitterly cold -- double-digits, but only barely; neither of us has initiated a trip to the greenhouse for watering or the mailbox to check delivery. Tir, in fact, has only begrudgingly left the love seat where he has been curled up and lost in a contented snore all morning. I certainly haven't pushed. I am no more interested in bundling up and braving the storm than he.

That said, as much as I have enjoyed the unseasonable mildness and the outdoor walks it has beckoned; as much as I have appreciated the simplicity of movement sans heavy coats and extra time required to assemble and arrange the bundling, I have looked forward to days like this one -- cold, settling, almost paralyzing days viewed from inside the window looking out; appreciating the reassuring hum of the furnace through the duct work, heart beat synchronizing with the flickering in the fireplace; skin indulging the hugging softness of a neglected sweater excavated from the bottom of the drawer; spirit held by the companionable silence too melodic in its own way to violate with the stereo or TV.

I understand that others temporarily migrate out of these kinds of days -- east to Florida, south to Texas or west to Arizona. I even comprehend why. The season can take its toll. But I have looked forward to a day like this. The holidays and their particular magic are behind us; the decorations have been lovingly and finally stored and the house rearranged to its more typical order. It is time for the simple descent of winter -- else how would we know to appreciate spring?

And today, it is finally here.

Vocational Sipping and Spitting

2012-01-05T09:27:00.000-06:00

Last summer, while in the Willamette Valley of Oregon exploring the concept of "terroir," three colleagues and I heard more than one farmer and winemaker exclaim that "these hills were made for pinot noir." Of course the hazelnut growers who had been there first might quibble with the assessment, but that clarity of discernment was striking. By that time we had come to the strong conviction that places are particular and best suited for certain things and not others. Agriculturally speaking, soil and climate, accumulating valleys and sunning slopes mean certain plants grow well while others flounder -- or require the vast amounts of artificial inputs that we now think of as "modern agriculture." The right crop in the right place, however, doesn't have to strong-armed. It simply flourishes and fruits. Pinot Noir in Oregon; apples in Washington; onions in Georgia; grapefruits in South Texas. Etc. Sure, a lot of places do pretty well with a lot of crops, but a few places accommodate a few things exceedingly well.

And people. This isn't ultimately about raw talent or innate ability, although those are relevant markers. I'm talking here more about "doing" than "being"; less about who we are and more about the particular things we are up to. In one of the most-quoted definitions of vocation, Frederick Buechner observes that “… The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC)

It is, in a way, finding the groove; cutting with the grain instead of against it. Admittedly, that "place" is not always that easy to locate, and I'm not sure that everyone would agree that a great pinot noir counts as one of the world's deep hungers. Those farmers' clarity about that soil's purpose, however, is animating. Unlike some of us who flounder around trying to figure out what we are supposed to do when we grow up, hoping it will simply hit us in the head one day, they, at least, have analyzed and experimented, taken notes and compared them with others who were trying to accomplish the same thing. They have noticed how the soil drained and where the daylight hours cast their shadows. They have watched and tasted and observed and been willing to fail. They have planted and uprooted, sipped and spat and above all been patient. And they have discerned, gleaning the insights observed and connected the dots. And it has all brought them to strong convictions about what those hills are for.

I think of those farmers as I read the Apostle Paul's reflections in Ephesians 3. He speaks forthrightly about the "commission that was given me...to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ..." Paul is not confused about what he needs to be up to. He has a particular job to do, and he is working it. It is his "groove" -- the intersection, he is convinced, of his deep gladness and the world's deep hunger.

In a way, of course, it almost feels like he cheated. He didn't have to nose around for grain like a blind hog; he was knocked off his horse one day and struck temporarily blind except for the vision that filled him in on the details. For most of us it doesn't happen that way. Our discernment process will bear more resemblance to the Oregon farmers than to Paul's blinding vision, but the clarity about the work we have to do is worth the patience.

That kind of sipping and spitting wouldn't be a bad way to spend this New Year just beginning to bud. If those hills were made for pinot noir, surely I have been made for something precious and needful as well.

Just Call Me Back

2012-01-03T17:02:00.002-06:00

The problem, it seems to me, is that we no longer have rubrics for triage.

While in college I worked at Cox's Department Store selling Men's Furnishings -- shirts, socks, ties and belts. We also sold underwear, but that didn't take a lot of "selling." During the training phase of my employment, I remember how insistently the manager told me that an actual customer in front of me took priority over a prospective customer on the phone. I thought he was right about that ordering, but the philosophy, I suppose, could be debated. The point, however, is that there was no mystery as to how I was to handle contests for my attention. Unfortunately for our culture, we don't have life managers who will provide the same service. As a result, we fall prey to the presumption that every knock on our figurative door is equally important. If the phone rings, we answer it even if we are already engaged in a conversation with someone else. If we receive a text, we read it -- and likely respond to it, never mind that we happen to be driving.

You get the idea. Gone is any concept of a hierarchy of importance -- those rubrics for triage to which I earlier referred.

Someone recently told me of being in the company of an individual whose cell phone began to ring. Worried that the recipient wasn't hearing the summons, my friend asked, "Aren't you going to answer that?" To which the other replied, "No; I carry that phone for my convenience, not everyone else's."

A recent article in the New York Times reported on the practice of some ultra wealthy to "...part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms." And then there are those, the writer goes on to observe, who "pay good money to get the Freedom software that enables them to disable (for up to eight hours) the very Internet connections that seemed so emancipating not long ago."

We have become expert, the author ultimately hints, at sensing what is new, but not what is essential. Maybe we have lost the ordinary and common art of simply asking the question. Modern brain research refutes the much-beloved premise of "multi-tasking." Our brain, if the scientists know what they are talking about, can't ultimately attend to multiple things at once; it simply becomes speedier at shifting back and forth. That, it seems to me, is a sure recipe for superficiality. In the course of our multi-tasking dizzyness, careful assessment and thoughtful evaluation -- essential components of prioritization, along with basic life and relational values -- are abandoned in service to simple attendance. Stimuli come our way, and we duck and dodge or, as is more commonly the case, allow them all to strike us full in the face regardless of how trivial or secondary they may actually be.

By contrast, one of Stephen Covey's principles for enhancing effectiveness is expanding the gap between stimulus and response -- something our grandmothers taught us in their admonition to "count to ten" before reacting. Scripture uses the larger language of sabbath to beckon us off the merry-go-round, less for simple rest -- although that never hurts -- than to regain orienting perspective.

Some things are, after all, more important than others. Which brings me back to that ringing phone, why we carry it, and how we will ever figure out who the actual customer is in front of us. I'm not at all sure of the answer to that question, but on your way to figuring it out for yourself try this: next time yours begins to ring, check the caller ID. If the caller happens to be me, feel free to finish whatever it is that you were doing. You can, after all, always call me back.

Looking Life in the Eyes

2011-12-30T09:07:00.000-06:00

Waiting is not our long suit. At the very least I am speaking autobiographically, but I think I am not the only one. Speed is of the essence. I curse the minute or so it takes for my computer to boot up, and I gnash my teeth at the slower internet connection at our new house. I can't wait for Christmas, but then once it arrives I rue the endless months between now and the next one. Even though we apply the query to matters of lesser and lesser consequence, we have made the plaintive cry of Martin Luther King, jr. and the Hebrew prophets our own: "How long, O Lord, how long?"

I could blame our mounting impatience on technology. Horses gave way to trains which gave way to automobiles which gave way to propeller-driven airplanes, which in turn gave way to jets. Dial-up was consumed by DSL, and the U.S. Postal Service is being/has been replaced by e-mail. We have come to expect that wherever we need to go we can get there quicker; whatever needs to be accomplished can be checked off faster and faster. We have, in a sense, been trained that way. Even major life issues we see encountered and resolved within the span of a 30-minute sitcom or at worst an hour-long drama. Shouldn't our lives work that way as well?

And so the rub when we read one of the texts often scheduled for this Sunday of the year:

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law,Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;for my eyes have seen your salvation,which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2:25-34)

Luke doesn't tell us how patiently Simeon had waited; only that he had done so -- presumably for a long, long time. He had waited. Day in and day out; watching and waiting. As a friend pointed out, this isn't really a "waiting" story but rather a "fulfillment" story -- Simeon is finally able to prayerfully exclaim, "OK, now I can die because I have finally seen what I was looking for." Fulfillment.

But isn't the reason we tell fulfillment stories is to reinforce the significance of the waiting still to be endured? Not even Simeon, after all, could claim with any honesty the waiting was really over. Moses, near the end of the Exodus through the wilderness, was finally able to see the Promised Land across the way, but there was still some distance to travel before their feet would actually land there, and that ultimate accomplishment would be beyond Moses' scope. Simeon looked into the baby's eyes and could see the salvation of his people, but it was looking through a telescope lens not a window. If it's possible for some to see a world in a grain of sand, it was apparently possible for Simeon to see the culmination of God's desire in a baby's eyes; but there is yet a vast difference between the "seeing" and the "arriving."

And we have not yet arrived. There is waiting still to be endured for the time when all hungry bellies are full, when all naked backs are clothed, when all lonely hearts are comforted, when all estrangements are reconciled, when every human being is honored, and when all of creation is recognized and revered for the fingerprint of God that it is.

We have a ways to go. And so we wait, taking inspiration from the likes of Simeon who somehow managed the suspense and the lengths of days while never ceasing to watch and listen. Eventually, after all, he recognized the sound and the sight he was after. If he can do it, well...

...perhaps we can, as well.

It's the Taste That Finally Matters

2011-12-22T11:04:00.001-06:00

Some number of years ago I heard a lecture by Jeremiah Wright, a now-retired African-American scholar and minister from Chicago who had the misfortune of being the pastor to a future President, and the impertinence to read scripture in general and the Hebrew prophets in particular under the delusion that the words might actually have some relevance beyond the ancient Hebrews -- maybe even for Americans, an unforgivable sin that challenged our sacrosanct notions of exceptionalism. But that's another story.

The lecture I heard, titled "Different, Not Deficient", described the physiological, evolutionary, linguistic and cultural particularities of people from African descent. It was a fascinating study, but what has stuck with me in the ensuing years is his observation that insiders can be critical of the "family", but outsiders had better steer clear. It's funny, he noted, when Eddie Murphy tells jokes about black people -- even employing with impunity words long-since scratched from the pages of decency dictionaries -- while the same jokes told by a white comedian would sound hurtful and racist. The same is true of deprecating Jewish humor voiced by Jewish comedians like Jackie Mason or Henny Youngman. Told from the inside, it's funny; from the outside, it is offensive.

That important pivot came to mind this morning as I finally got around to reading Stephen Bloom's "Observations from 20 Years of Iowa Life" published earlier this month in The Atlantic Magazine. Bloom, a Professor of Journalism at the University of Iowa for the past two decades, has the advantage or the misfortune of being just such an outsider. Little wonder, then, that his observations have intruded on Iowans' own sense of exceptionalism; vilified in the state, as a result, because of his characterizations of the towns and traditions and demographics situated between, as he refers to them, the once-great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Indeed, an article in today's Des Moines Register reports that Bloom, on leave this year and teaching in Michigan, has essentially gone into hiding for the holidays because of the hate mail he has received.

Like Bloom I, too, am a transplant, having moved to Iowa about the same time just short of 20 years ago. My relocation brought me from the "mother of all" exceptionalists -- the great nation of Texas -- where I had been born and reared, and I'll admit that I unpacked with some sense of disoriented trepidation. Yards were small, houses had a conspicuous absence of brick, overages were stored in basements instead of attics, there seemed to be a notable shortage of jewelry, women's hairstyles were small -- even demur, and of course there was snow. But life as I have experienced it in this foreign land has been blessed and good. There have been opportunities along the way to move, but I have stayed -- not long enough to become an actual "Iowan", of course, but long enough to feel gratefully at home and appreciative of the people and places and sensibilities that surround me. I like it here. In fact, I have just sunk an even deeper set of roots here with the purchase of an acreage and a home "on the land."

All that said -- or perhaps because of those details -- I read Bloom's observations a good bit more charitably than most apparently have. As far as I can tell, he has his facts straight, and of the data essentially speaks the truth. We may not like having all these dingier details spotlighted for the world to see, but it is hard to argue with the assessment that they are, in fact, our details. Indeed, I have heard much the same data named and lamented in public and casual conversations as long as I have lived here -- the drying up of small rural towns, the forced consolidation of declining school districts, the declining population, the "brain-drain" that is the departure of our young for "sexier" locales, the deterioration of infrastructures, the departure of manufacturing jobs for cheaper labor south of the border, and of course an often-forbidding climate. Did Bloom write anything that even the governor himself has not decried, or for that matter virtually every mayor in the state? Not that I saw.

Bloom, I think, got the facts straight; it is the spirit -- the ethos and the pathos -- he got wrong. Iowans would contend, I suspect, that they are less defined or described by the data of our circumstances than by the essence of our community. Frankly, I'm not sure that's different from any other city or state. We are certainly not less than our demographics or economies or climates, but we are just as certainly more. Except for the most parochially delusional, Iowans look out across the landscape of their lives and see the same realities as those listed by Professor Bloom, but simply don't recognize themselves in his characterization. The two dimensions of his altogether dispassionate observation are, I would argue, unassailably accurate; they simply overlook the more revelatory third dimension of social and cultural intercourse that colors and animates the living of a people's life together. In culinary terms, Bloom accurately listed the ingredients of our cultural recipe; he simply botched the way the finished dish actually tastes.

The ingredients, to be sure, aren't unimportant; but it is, after all, the taste that one finally remembers.

In the Listening and the Speaking

2011-12-21T10:57:00.003-06:00

It was a hospital story that dominated discussion this morning. Sometimes it is a recent trip or political commentary; recently we delved into the varied nuances of deer hunting regulations at the county level. Rarely, however, is there silence. For the past 16 years -- or perhaps 17 or 18, I forget -- most of my Wednesday mornings have begun at 6:30 a.m. with a group of men who have little in common apart from that sausage biscuit, banana, the weekly conversation and our gender. It isn't a religious group, nor is it therapy even though it was birthed by one of the staff at the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center who had a particular interest in men's issues.

We read a book together from time to time -- about transitions, for example, or gender issues appropriately enough; we have read about soul work and parenting and currently happiness. But the books and their topics have become less important over the years. Indeed, a book may last us a year because weeks will go by with the upcoming chapter unacknowledged, sidelined by more important matters. In the course of our meeting together we have shared the trauma of devastating diagnoses and the physical and emotional swings of subsequent treatments, even singing at the funeral of one of our "members." We have patiently and presently listened until tears abated long enough to continue a telling about a marital separation or a breathtaking insight or a parental disappointment or a recent and still-stinging grief. We have buried spouses, been part of foreign adoptions, nurtured the blossoms of budding romance and eventual marriage, counseled retirements and waved goodbye.

We have held each other in our keeping. For some reason I have been reflecting on the miracle of this community. In this Twittering Facebook world, there is certainly no absence of information. We know all manner of detail about friends and family and virtual strangers alike. We are made privy to political views, personal and sometimes questionable photographs, the details of new tattoos, shopping frustrations and the color of the baby's vomit. But I'm not sure how much this tsunami of information creates real community.

Churches occasionally get it right, creating moments and spaces for sharing the substance of our joys and concerns. But just as often congregations are better at advocating for community than they are at building it, worshiping side by side but too easily going our separate ways having shared little more than an attendance register and a common pew.

Genuine community requires a double-edged vulnerability: we have to be willing to speak out loud about what we find in those nooks and crannies of our being moist enough for real life to germinate; and we have to be patient and available enough to listen as those around us are sharing it. Of the former, we need be cognizant enough about ourselves to trust in the significance of small and often quiet inner voices. Of the latter, we must keep in mind that "interesting" and "important" are not always the same. Community requires a reverence for both the mouth and the ear.

I'm grateful for this merry band of men who have long since been content to laugh together, cry together, mourn together, argue together, celebrate together, wait together and, above all -- or perhaps it is "through it all" -- to hold one another in our collective keeping.

A Worthy and Blessed Adversary

2011-12-18T08:42:00.002-06:00

I learned late this week of the death of Loren Cartwright -- a hundred-and-something year old member of First Christian Church. His is a noteworthy passing, for more reasons than his advanced age. Loren, whatever his other accomplishments, was a blunt straight-shooter.

A retired banker, Loren always presented himself as a businessman with a clear grasp of the numbers. Numbers, he would argue, don't lie. What I hadn't known about him until a year or so ago, at his last birthday gathering in the private dining room of Scottish Rite Park, was that he had started out as a musician of some talent who had even played one night as a fill-in with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. "Playing in a band," he recalled, "was the hardest work in the world, and after that night I decided to go back to school and get a regular job."

But it wasn't his resume that impressed me. It was his aliveness and forthrightness. Widowed several years ago, Loren kept connected with family and the world through the internet. I don't know how many computers he went through while at Scottish Rite, but I remember him showing me his new laptop years ago. He wasn't one to coast. Knowing that he was thusly "connected" despite being homebound, I emailed him my Christmas sermon a couple of years ago as we were headed out of town, thinking he might appreciate the token. He emailed me back the next day, thanking me for the thought, but taking issue with the content of the sermon itself. "I just can't imagine what relevance Al Capone has to the Christmas story," he wrote referring to my opening illustration. I dutifully wrote back, trying to better explain my thought process. He, in turn, wrote back; thanking me for my consideration but confessing -- or muttering -- that he "still didn't get it." The truth, I suspect, was that he "got it," he just didn't approve.

What will always endear Loren to me, however, was his relationship to the sanctuary renovation project the church undertook several years ago. In short, Loren was against it. Vigorously. Noisily. It was foolishness, he said often and to whomever would listen. "A total waste of money." I no longer recall what it was about the project that offended him. Maybe it was simply the expenditure of money on a room that, as far as he was concerned, was perfectly fine. Maybe -- and this is likelier -- Loren was pessimistic about the future viability of the congregation and he saw it all as throwing good money after bad. I don't know. All I know is that Loren continued to vote against the project at every possible opportunity, even after the workers were well underway.

It isn't his negativity, however, that marks this particular congregational episode. It is his public repentance. After the project was completed and the congregation, after the six or eight months of worshiping in Fellowship Hall, had moved back into the "new" space, Loren stood up during the sharing of joys and concerns one Sunday during the service and confessed his mistake. "I was wholeheartedly against this renovation project," he acknowledged before the congregation, "but I am here to say that I was WRONG" (emphasis his). "This," he concluded with an arm sweeping around the room, "is WONDERFUL."

I'll never forget that moment. Loren didn't suffer fools, was a verbal curmudgeon, and he was never short on certainty. We often disagreed on what was "certainly" right, and I still think he was wrong about the Al Capone story, but it takes a large person to stand up in a crowd and admit his error. Despite his rather diminutive stature, at that moment Loren became one of the biggest men I know.

Loren loved life, but I have no doubt he was ready to go. He never ceased to miss his beloved Ethel, and the world, as far as he was concerned, was getting crazier and crazier. "Enough," I can almost hear him declare, "with all that."

Rest, then, you signal centenarian, in peace.

Rejoicing Always -- Even Amidst Happy Holidays

2011-12-08T08:04:00.001-06:00

Rejoice always,pray without ceasing,give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.Do not quench the Spirit.Do not despise the words of prophets,but test everything; hold fast to what is good;abstain from every form of evil.
May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-24)

This year's popular crusade has become the punishment of stores that commit the unforgivable sin of wishing their customers a "Happy Holiday" instead of Merry Christmas. Political candidates rail against such diminution of religion. An internet campaign is pushing a trite little song, sung in part by children, which advocates the boycott of Merry Christmas-less merchants. "News" pundits decry the tyranny of "political correctness" that strips good old American Christianity from consumeristic discourse. "It is, after all, about the birth of Jesus" they huff.

Well, for many of us. But for many others it is about a wide variety of other affirmations and celebrations and -- yes, it's true -- religious devotions. Christmas may be the loudest jukebox at the party this time of year, but it isn't the only music playing. And even Christians have to admit that we sort of pirated this season from an already existing semi-religious observance full in the hearts of many. Nobody, after all, really believes that Jesus was born on December 25. I wonder if the druids decried what they must have viewed as the lamentable shift from "Happy Solstice" to "Merry Christmas," and scratched their heads over how to reclaim what, as far as they were concerned, was the "reason for the season"?

I have a hunch that if you asked 10 random retail merchants why they opted for "Happy Holidays" signs in their store instead of ones encouraging a "Merry Christmas" not one of them would mention political correctness. They would, instead, speak to the need to relate to a wide variety of consumers, only some of whom are Christian. Especially in this challenging economy, retailers who rely on the goodwill of their customers can't afford to alienate any available constituency. While Christians ought to feel perfectly comfortable and free to wish the cashiers who serve them a "Merry Christmas" as we leave, surely we can cut the same employee some slack for not choosing to predetermine the faith tradition of the stranger placing a nick knack or a sweater on the counter.

Why is it that Christians seem always to pick such flimsy fights? While we are busy fuming over slogans, who is worrying, meanwhile, about the unemployed who, in greater and greater numbers each month, simply give up looking for work because jobs are not to be found -- a statistical fact hidden in the rosier unemployment statistics published every few weeks? Who is concerned about the long term effects of the shrinking middle class and the consolidation of the citizenry into merely the "ultra rich" and the "ultra poor"? Just today the Des Moines Area Religious Council's Food Pantry announced that they are reducing the number of canned goods in the bags given to needy families because -- and this truly shameful -- the supply of food received by the Pantry is not keeping up with the escalating need. I wish a candidate for President would condemn this state of affairs. Or, I don't know, maybe all this would be instantly fixed if only the Shoe Carnival clerk would wish everyone a "Merry Christmas."

This is not the kind of distraction that ought to be consuming we consumers. This is not an issue worthy of the church's energies. The scriptures we purport to read and use for guidance are full of succinct reminders of stronger priorities. When the prophet Micah recalled that "God has shown you what is good," he wasn't talking about season exclamations. He went on to enumerate the doing of justice, the love of kindness, and the daily walk, in humility, with God. When Jesus preached to his hometown congregation, he didn't announce that he had come to police appropriate holiday greetings; he claimed the enjoinder of the prophet Isaiah, acknowledging that "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, ro bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor..." And when Jesus imagined the final judgment and the rubrics for reward and punishment, he didn't name Christmas signage. He spoke of sharing cool water with the thirsty, sharing food with the hungry, sharing companionship with the lonely, sharing comfort with the mourning and clothing with the naked. The question of how we greet each other in the marketplace during the month of December is too puny of a windmill for Christians to tilt at.

If I were preaching this Sunday I would focus on the epistle reading out of 1 Thessalonians from the Revised Common Lectionary. For one thing, the passage strikes me as a powerful and light-filled word for a people living in a fairly dark time. For another, it focuses our attention where, day in and day out, it ought to be in the first place: less on judging others as to what we think they ought to be doing, and more on those behaviors and attitudes that we -- as disciples of Jesus -- ought to be exhibiting.

Sears, Redux

2011-11-29T09:27:00.001-06:00

Lori tells me I have to post an update. The Sears saga has come to some resolution, and I agree that it's only fair that the rest of the story be told.

For starters, I did, indeed, receive a follow-up email from Sears after my second rather spicy provision of feedback. It was, I have to say, a rather patronizing response that suggested if I had wanted a stove equipped a certain way I should have mentioned that at the time of purchase. Never mind that I had done precisely that, and had included that information in my initial communications. Nevertheless, the message continued...
"If you had an issue where an installation occurred from one of our licensed installers, and they connected the appliance to your propanegas line without converting it and telling you, then that is a separateissue. If such a case has occurred, please contact [number deleted], and we will escalate your case to our Installation Solutions, and they willdiscuss further options."

"Escalate." I love that. So, I took my "separate issue" into escalation, dialed the number, and after two or three tries was connected to a helpful man in Florida in the unenviable position of working in the central office of "I'm mad and want to complain." He agreed that my experiences were unacceptable, and that while his options were limited he anticipated that the local store manager would not want a customer "out there" feeling the way I do, and that surely he would want to "participate" in some resolution.

At this point I anticipated that my helpful Floridian was going to suggest I call the store. Cutting him off I indicated that I had tried that, but that the Sears phone jail system made it practically impossible to ever talk to anyone. He mentioned that he had a "direct" number. After being on hold for several minutes he came back on the line to tell me that the store manager didn't seem to be available, but that an assistant manager was on the line who would help me. After introducing us to each other, my first helper left the conversation in our capable hands. Much to my surprise, the assistant manager listened, empathized, asked questions about how much money I was now spending on what should have been covered in the first place, clattered around on a calculator, and offered me $500 to cover the extra expenses. After I happily accepted his offer, he took my bank card information and relayed that he would call me back when the refund transaction was completed.

Hours later I got a call from our original salesperson, apologizing for the mess and reassuring me that he had looked up our order and confirmed that what we had ordered was correct; the problems had started after it left his and our involvement. "Oh," he continued, "and I understand that the assistant manager offered you $500 to cover the extra costs." I confirmed the offer. "Well, the assistant manager talked it over with the manager and..."

It was at exactly this moment when I thought I was really going to have to eat crow. "They are going to up the ante," I thought to myself.

"...and the most we are able to offer is $450."

"Really," I thought to myself; "you are going to jerk me, an already mad and mouthy customer, around for a lousy $50 bucks? Really? I can't believe it."

But that's where I left it. I took the $450 and ran, thankful that I had come out of the aggravation with anything but more aggravation. It will likely cover most if not all the expenses, and I wasn't, after all, out for blood.

Simply what I had supposedly purchased IN THE FIRST PLACE.

As for you, Mr. Cheapskate store manager, take your spouse out to dinner with my $50 and enjoy every miserly bite.

Because Sears Won't Return My Call

2011-11-22T14:29:00.001-06:00

Fair warning: this is a rant. Think of it as payback -- retribution, the very kind of thing that a decent Christian is supposed to eschew. The problem is -- as happens so often in these circumstances -- I'm not feeling particularly Christian.

In short, I'm mad at Sears. I know that inducts me into a rather large fraternity. Almost any time I mention Sears I am met with eye-rolls and groans. We aren't talking high reputation here. If my experience is representative, it is derision honestly and thoroughly earned.

As you may know, we recently moved. Two months ago. In the process we purchased new appliances...from Sears. In contrast to previous experiences, we actually found -- and liked -- a salesperson. He was friendly, winsome, and helpful. He went -- and I don't say this lightly -- above and beyond. So did we, I might add. We bought several appliances. Nice ones. Plus the extended service contract.

On the appointed delivery day, all seemed to go well. Again, the delivery personnel were efficient and affable. But when I found a floor covered in water from the refrigerator a scant two hours post-delivery, I called the super, handy-dandy, elite service number and, after talking with nine different people -- literally. Nine -- who each solicited from me the exact same information, I learned that they would be happy to send someone out in two weeks. "It's a brand new refrigerator that hasn't been here two hours," I replied. "And it is flooding my house." Two weeks was the best I could get. "Did I want to go ahead and schedule that service call?" I was asked. No, I responded, and suggested that I would prefer my service contract back. I called a plumber who came that afternoon.

Meanwhile, the stove. I don't know anything about propane -- our new fuel of record out here in the country -- so I don't know how to assess "normal." But in our two months of use we have wearied of the black soot that cakes on the bottom of the pots sitting over the fire, and subsequently smears on clothes, rags, rubber dishwashing gloves, etc. It's gross. It's persistent. But as I say, who knows? Maybe that's propane's normal. Before resigning ourselves to the nuisance, however, I once again called our local repair service. I was concerned that I might not live long enough to see a service call from Sears. I called yesterday. A technician was here at 9:00 a.m. this morning. From him I learned that the stove was incorrectly installed. There is a conversion kit required for propane -- the very one I was promised actually came with the stove -- and a second adjustment that is supposed to me made. Neither action had been accomplished. "I can't believe you have been living with this," he marveled. "Besides, it's not really safe. See those yellow flames? They are producing carbon monoxide. That, and the flames are way too large. That's dangerous, too. Something could catch fire." Yes, I muttered, and cover the world with soot.

So now I have ordered, for $165, the conversion kit that I supposedly already bought, will enjoy a second service call, neither of which should have been necessary, and Sears won't respond to my invitations for conversation.

So, as I duly promised them in one of my queries, I am ranting out loud, cautioning anyone and everyone who might have an interest to save yourself the headache -- and maybe even your life -- and shop somewhere else. Anywhere but Sears. Please, God, not Sears. Your heart will thank you. Your blood pressure will thank you. Your pots and pans will thank you. And quite possibly your insurance company and the fire marshal will thank you, as well.

So there, I've said it. My rant is officially over. Go back to whatever you were doing. My stove still doesn't work right -- and won't until the parts come in -- but it's nice to get it off my chest. And maybe now I can get back to being a reasonably decent Christian.

Menu choices of the Absurd

2011-11-13T22:15:00.001-06:00

The setting was in every way extraordinary -- elegant, dignified, gentle while at the same time quietly assertive. Perhaps its reputation had co-opted my objectivity, but I rather believe the restaurant truthfully was what it held itself out to be: quite simply one of the finest restaurants in the world, at least as adjudged by the professional muses of such matters. In Napa Valley for yet another foray into cooking, both our hosts at the B & B and our chef instructor for the week at the Culinary Institute of America had called attention to the place. I, of course, had never heard of it before their mention, and I will leave it anonymous; more than a bit embarrassed to have indulged ourselves with such an extravagance. If, however, a sin, it was a glorious one that we will never forget. We were ushered to our "lovely table" that had been "prepared for us" as though we owned the place. We tried to contain our giddy grins with the aloof air of people who frequent such destinations customarily, but I am confident that no one was deceived. Any opaqueness was scrubbed when, after one particularly delirious course, I asked our demur server how she kept from giggling her way through each night's dinner. "It is quite wonderful, isn't it" she replied.We were not, however, alone. Behind our "lovely table" was another, occupied by a couple on whom the room's otherwise library-like decorum was quite lost. They talked business (the state of the global economy, for which the man of the table seemed to possess all the answers), politics (they were not independents or moderates), and wine. By the end of the evening the sommelier had to be delighted to see them go, having dominated her time the entire evening with arcane questions of vineyard sites, vintages, lot numbers, colonial varieties and alcohol content. Before the oenological carnage was finished, three opened bottles had been rejected and the fourth only tepidly approved. But however annoying the pair was through the rest of the evening, they provided one enduring and delectable gem. Surveying the rather adventuresome menu, the woman of the table almost yawningly observed, "it all looks interesting, though I am particularly drawn to the cocks comb and the trout. Ah, but we so rarely have trout."And let's face it, cocks comb can become so tiresome night after night. Smugness, the comment reminded me, no matter how elegant the setting, is ultimately oafish and demeaning. Maybe that's one of the reasons Jesus counseled guests at a dinner to select the seats at the places of least honor.

Putting the Garden to Bed

2011-11-01T09:14:00.000-06:00

The sense of satisfaction certainly drowns out the melancholy, but the latter's voice is undeniably singing. Yesterday, I drove out to the Baxter farm for the official wind down. I took down the fencing and rolled it up for next year's use. I surveyed the largely spent plants and plucked the languishing harvest -- a couple dozen more tomatillos, a couple of peppers, and some spicy lettuce. There was an entire section of wispy green onions that for months I have been expecting to mature into something larger I uprooted and bagged. And then the larger pulling and chopping began. The marigolds that had offered such beautiful perimeters all season were the first to go. Their dried golden blooms and weary stems came up easily -- almost grateful, it seemed, for the rest. The tomato cages and the woody plants they supported offered themselves smoothly as well. The okra plants refused to go -- roots apparently woven deep into the soil, no doubt accounting for their prolific output. It all went quickly -- even with the digging and chopping required of the few; a surprisingly brief process given the hours and months invested in the creation. The debris was hauled away to the burn pile, and then the work was done.

I have not been attentive to this precious plot of ground since the moving process began in earnest mid-August. There is the only lament. There were too many boxes to pack; too many loads to carry from garage to garage; too much to organize, thin and clean, and then the inevitable unpacking and fresh organization. There was work to be done here, where the future is being built, but out there the plants continued to thirst and push out fruit as best they were able. Regularly Larry and Shirley, the garden hosts, would bring me reports of its progress along with offerings from the late season harvest. But it was tough to focus, given so much to do.

It had been weeks, then, since I had made the trip up north. The weather had changed and the season was passing. Still present, its eyes were closing. It had done its work as best it was able, and it was time to close this chapter.

I am profoundly grateful for the gift of the land that made the experience possible -- a generous wish to encourage my new passion. My benefactors endured my routine visits for weeding and watering and mowing and tending around the edges of my professional life, early in the morning and late in the evening. They looked after things when I couldn't, and offered advice and inspiration and encouragement throughout the months.

And I am tenderly grateful to the plants themselves. Some things turned out well; others shriveled without so much as a bud. We gleaned too much of some things -- okra and tomatillos come to mind -- and too little of others, like the beats and the brussels sprouts and the melons. But overall I am humbled by the results tendered to someone so utterly ignorant of the process. It has been, from seeding to plucking, an educational experience. I'm not sure what all I retain, but the plants have taught me well. They had the temerity to sprout from their seeds in our living room window; the charity to forgive my ignorance about temperature and light, and the hardiness to withstand the transplanting and the tending and the vicissitudes of weather.

And now the garden is clear. It takes a careful look to recognize what actually went on there over the past six months; most signs of cultivation have been eradicated. It's gratifying to learn that Shirley plans to sustain the project next summer, while I relocate my efforts to ground we have come to occupy. But for now there is satisfaction in the completion.

Until the seed catalogs begin to arrive.

Shifting Gears and Gasing Up

2011-10-27T10:42:00.000-06:00

Seasons change. I not only know that, I look forward to it. One of Iowa's celebrative features is its seasonal diversity -- four of them, each unique and delicious in its own way. Yes, even winter. In addition to its own intrinsic wonder and introspective beauty, there is no more beautiful spring than one that follows a particularly bitter winter. In future years, as this gardening project develops and becomes more familiar, I know that late autumn and the settling frost of winter will be welcomed respite from the exertions of the summer field.

But we have just gotten here. I have mowed a grand total of twice -- only just completed the greenhouse and cleared the space that will be my inaugural garden. We have, after all, been unpacking and reorganizing and hanging pictures and baking for the open house -- vastly more pressing pursuits. And only now for the most part on the "settled" side of those demands, it seems too soon -- and almost unfair -- to shift our attention to winter; never mind that our bodies are over-weary from the unusual demands and physicality of the move. Knees and ankles and muscles seem imprisoned in perpetual ache, no doubt looking forward to the more sedentary pages of the calendar. And it will be pure delight to nestle into the sofa in front of the newly serviced fireplace and listen to the icy wind howl and watch, through the windows, the flakes fall and drift.

We moved here, though, to garden -- to open the soil and tend it and beckon out of it something edible and nourishing and good, and springtime seems a long time to wait.

But we don't get to decide. The leaves have fallen and the temperature is following in kind. The foreshadowings of winter are insinuating themselves more and more. And so we have officially made the switch. With the help of kind and sympathizing friends, the mower deck has been disengaged and parked; replaced with the snowblower that sits ready and, if I can anthropomorphize a bit, eager. Lori's prerequisite for entertaining this crazy idea was that I get her out of the driveway on snowy mornings. Having, then, honored her side of the idea by moving here, I am ready to honor mine. So, bring on the snow. I'm prepared.

Eventually the Seeds

2011-10-02T17:26:00.000-06:00

"So are you gardening yet?"
Right. We moved a scant two weeks ago and neither of us has scarcely done anything beyond unboxing and trying to find a place to nest the contents. But we are making progress. Even the guest room could accommodate visitors as long as they packed a modicum of toleration. We've even begun considering which piece might accent which blank wall. And we did plant fruit trees yesterday -- two apples, two plums, and two apricots that were birthday gifts from my kids; affectionately indulgent, even if they can't fathom what their crazy father has done with his livelihood.

And for two days, Larry and Shirley have devoted themselves to the assembly of my 10' X 12' X 8' greenhouse. The YouTube video made it look like a snap, but having consumed a collective 50 hours of labor to only get us as far as the frame, I take some issue with their attestation. Thankfully, they have the grit to return tomorrow to hopefully see the project completed.

Regardless of the pace, it is all underway -- the land, the house, the trees and the opportunity. Eventually the boxes will be behind us, and the seeds will be in front of us.

Anticipating the taste of THIS place

2011-08-11T07:31:00.003-06:00

Sleep dissipated before the night. It is a common problem when sleeping in a different time zone. The body can't decide whether to believe itself or the hands on the clock. After thrashing the sheets for awhile in physical debate I finally opted to split the difference -- too early to get up in Portland but past time in Des Moines. It's just as well. A little quiet time at the beginning of this day is a pleasant derivative of an aborted night.

We all arrived on schedule -- perhaps 15 minutes apart -- and found each other in the airport baggage claim for this our fourth and final Terroir retreat. It has been quite a ride these past 2 years -- and at least for me, quite life changing. This grant-funded experience that the four of us agreed to make a play on with no expectation that our application would be favorably received has taken us to upstate New York, eastern Vermont, downtown Chicago, and now Portland, Oregon. Along the way we have met some fascinating ministers, artful and thoughtful chefs, and passionate and sensitive farmers, all with an ear for hearing what they had to teach us about the uniqueness of locale -- the taste of place. And in the course of things, we four -- one from Oklahoma living in Texas, one from Texas living in Iowa, and two Iowans, a blend of United Methodist and Disciples -- have had a lot of fun in each other's presence and care.

It's hard to imagine the experience coming to an end. For the past two years it has been one of the "big rocks" in my pile -- first writing the grant proposal, then waiting to hear from the grant selection committee; designing and booking each excursion; reading the preparatory books in advance; and then savoring the trips.

And as I hinted, along the way my center of gravity has shifted. In a way that I can't help but assume is part of the purpose and hope of the grant program, I am a fundamentally different person as a result of all we have passed through together. I see differently. I think differently. I eat differently. The way I practice what I do is different, but moreover, I am in the process of dramatically changing the very "it" of what it is that I do.

All of which is to say that this study in Terroir will hardly be over at the end of this weekend only now commencing. There is much to contemplate, much to pray about and consider, much to write and much to share.

But all of that will have to wait. The sun has finally come up, and the experience -- this final experience -- is set to begin, offering some lesson on the taste of THIS place.

More than a few of the details are still missing

2011-08-08T07:52:00.000-06:00

I know, I know, I should have been writing about all this. Since the seeds and seedlings went into the ground the summer has washed by in a Monet-like blur -- clear enough to recognize the general shapes and impressions, but seldom enough to discern the details. But as with the heat that has finally broken -- at least for the present -- accompanied by some liberating rains, perhaps enough has shifted in me to allow a few more words, here and there, to emerge and dare to bear a little fruit.

A lot has happened, after all. Since the first of May I have resigned my job -- the 19-year expression of a vocation I commenced 30 years ago this December; we planted a garden as the first down-payment on a new field of study and ministry; bought a farm south of town, readied our house to sell and officially got it on the market; undertaken the arduous journey of transitioning out of pastoral relationships and roles, and now prepare for the final few weeks as Senior Minister of First Christian Church of Des Moines. From the gardens as well as the church there has been fruit to harvest -- okra, swiss chard, lettuce, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatillos, radishes, cucumbers, beets, beans and onions from the former; new members and heart-felt expressions from the latter. And it has been profoundly good -- if more than a little physically and emotionally exhausting. We have been lost in the morass of transition through which we are only beginning to find our way. There is still plenty to be done -- more than seems possible in the allotted time -- but we are also beginning to make out the Monet-like shapes of the life beyond, trusting that eventually the Impressionism will transition into Realism.

One Way or the Other, It's All About the Rain

2011-06-27T08:04:00.000-06:00

"It was a dark and stormy night..."
OK, I know that sounds like a Mickey Spillane novel, but in our case it is true. Close and jarring lightening, punctuated by thunderous grumblings and splattering rain whipped by severe winds spooked the night. It was a meteorological melodrama that prompted more than one query as to whether we should sleep in the lower level. It isn't a storm cellar by a long shot, but it is lower and at least feels more grounded, with a few more corners remote from the prospect of flying glass.

Morning, however, finds all well and mostly in its place. The sky is blue, with scattered clouds -- like a guilty child trying to pretend its innocence. Walking Tir through the neighborhood we were serenaded by gurgling storm sewers while dodging puddle-bloated branches blown drown from trees and damming the gutters. My deck garden seems to have survived intact. My single pea-sized tomato looks no worse for the disruption, and the half-dozen or so peppers curling and dangling from their stems managed to hold on as well. The rest of the tomato plants and tomatillos are still covered with blossoms. Tir and I offer a sigh of relief.

Hopefully we will be able to get some work done at the big garden. The almost daily rains will have elevated the mowing alert status to "red," and the trenches will be inundated with weeks. It would be funny if it weren't aggravating: at the Berclair farm, nothing can be done because of the drought. At the Baxter farm, nothing can be done because of the rain.

Go figure.

The Neighborly Equivalent of a Song

2011-06-06T06:56:00.000-06:00

It's somehow friendlier early in the morning. Perhaps it is the coolness before the summer sweat simmers all the flavor out of our congeniality. Perhaps it is the spirit of possibility still fresh before the day's inevitable jostles and sharp edges. Perhaps we haven't yet turned on the morning news to see what new travesties nature -- or other human beings -- have inflicted on us overnight. Perhaps it is simply that our muscles and demeanor have not yet had the chance to fist themselves into defensive postures. Or maybe there is simply a relational expansiveness early in the day that, like morning glories, opens only briefly -- beautifully -- before folding back up again until tomorrow.

Whatever the explanation, it was in delightful bloom this morning as Tir and I enjoyed a first walk through more remote portions of the neighborhood. Sprinklers were already busy in lawns; one early riser with hose in hand was washing off his driveway -- and smiled and said, "hello." Drivers of passing cars waved. Even the hostas in the manicured landscaping seemed to swell into greeting, and the vibrant purple of the sage seemed to glow luminescent just for us.

Before long I will be back at the garden, weeding out the interlopers, and trimming back the encroaching blades. Someone, sometime in this day, will almost certainly speak a jagged edge. But early, the day began with the neighborly equivalent of a song.

Market Blessing 2011

2011-06-02T10:20:00.000-06:00

For the past 14 years our church has hosted a farmer's market in the parking lot. By comparison, our market is tiny -- 20 or so vendors in contrast to the 200 or more downtown -- but it is wonderfully accessible, delightfully relational, surprisingly multi-cultural, and, to summarize it in a word, neighborly. From Kettle Corn to Barbecue, hand-turned woodcrafts and baskets and games, to artisan bread and local honey and vegetables of wide description.

One of my favorite writing assignments for the past few years has been to offer a "Blessing of the Market" prior to the opening whistle on the opening afternoon -- a blessing and a whistle that both blew last evening. I'm always amazed and more than a little humbled by the attention paid in those quiet and prayerful moments by eager vendors and hovering shoppers alike. This year the sun was shining and the breeze was gently wafting and it couldn't have been more perfect. And amidst all the anticipation, this year's blessing went like this:

God of the soil and those who tend it; of the seeds and those who plant them; of rabbits and weeds and those who contend against them; of running vines and swelling fruit, and all those who harvest them; of satisfying food and those who prepare it, we give you thanks for all those miracles of nature and ministrations of humans that go on in fields and kitchens and craft rooms to enable such a market as this. Bless our weeks together – we buyers and sellers, poppers and barbecuers, diners and growers and groaners carrying bags delightfully overfilled. Bless the conversations we initiate, the efforts we appreciate, the playfulness we stimulate, and the community that, in our comings and going and setting up and tearing down, we create. Bless this market, we pray, with a taste – a foretaste, even – of life as you intend it. Amen.

Pencil Marking the Growth

2011-06-02T09:14:00.000-06:00

LT calls it "Post Gardening" -- planting in a soil-filled PVC pipe. The 20 such posts I have planted and ringing our deck are progressing nicely. The lettuce is ready for a salad, the swiss chard is leaning toward saute, at least one pepper plant is showing off,

and the tomatillo and tomatoes are starting to blossom.

Rain has relieved some of the watering responsibilities, but the truth is I rather enjoy the chance to survey the progress and bond with the emergent harvest.

How else, for example, would I have noticed the vivid yellow stems of the swiss chard, reminding me of the varietal's name -- "bright lights"?

Now that the third garden is planted -- a community garden plot downtown -- there will be even more to water; hopefully even more to pay attention to and, if there were a door frame nearby, pencil mark the height progress like I used to do with the kids.

The Slow and Gentle Moves of Disentanglement

2011-05-26T11:07:00.000-06:00

“So how does it feel?” a friend and colleague asked yesterday.

“Strange” was all I knew how to respond. It has been just short of a month since I announced my decision to conclude my ministry here at the end of August, and the responses from others have been quite diverse. “I didn't know you were mad,” said one. For the record, I'm not. “I didn't know anything was wrong,” said another. I'm not aware that anything is wrong. “I am sure you are off to something bigger and better,” responded still another. Well, not so much. I am off to something smaller and dirtier. I'm planning, after all, to farm. More specifically, I plan to learn how to grow food, and to write about the process.

I know, that sounds bizarre. To me, however, it has come to feel compellingly important. For one thing, I don't know how to grow food; and while I am eternally grateful to all those who have done it on my behalf all these years, I am no longer satisfied being the passive benefactor of their efforts. If the truth be told, deep down I am more than a little jealous of them. There is, I am coming to realize, something powerfully mystical and fundamentally, elementally spiritual about participating with God in this process of growth, nurture and nourishment. And I have been missing out. Never mind that I am starting from scratch; I intend to catch up.

But it isn't simply a matter of my own spiritual vitality. There is something missional in all this, as well. As I have increasingly felt competent enough to talk about out loud, we can talk all we want to about “feeding the world,” but if the means we employ are not sustainable in the long term, then I am not sure our efforts stand much chance of success. If, as it seems increasingly clear, that our entire food system – from preparation, to cultivation, to fertilization, to harvest and eventually processing and distribution – is predicated on cheap and readily available energy, what happens when either one of those provisos ceases to be a given? Or both? What happens when energy becomes too expensive to afford, or too short in supply to service the requirements? It seems to me that the answer is, "we get hungry." Will this happen in my lifetime? Probably not. Will it happen during the lifetime of my children? Perhaps. But will it happen sometime? I don't see how we can forestall it.

So, what should we do? It seems to me that somebody better remember how to grow food on different terms, on a different scale, closer to home – in back yards rather than epic but distant fields. I don't know very many in my generation who know how to do that. I haven't yet met anyone in my children's generation with that kind of knowledge. I am not delusional enough to think I can save the world, but I am hopeful enough to want to be a part of that “great cloud” of collective memory that keeps such knowledge and skill alive; to learn, but then also to teach. I figure that no one is better equipped to chronicle and share the process than someone like myself who begins by knowing absolutely nothing about it.

So, yes, I know it sounds a little crazy. But it feels, as I have shared with my congregation, every bit as strong of a calling as the one that brought me to Des Moines in the first place. I could refuse and ignore that call, but I haven't a clue how I could meaningfully live with that decision. And so Lori and I have made the other decision. To be sure, as I told my questioning friend, it feels strange now in this “time between times.” I am here and working for another few months, but daily becoming increasingly irrelevant to the plans and decisions and visions of the congregation that necessarily continue apace. And I am not accustomed to feeling irrelevant. Or, in some odd and disconcerting way that I don't even like to admit to myself, out of place.

But the transition is important to both the congregation and me. Our lives have been intertwined for almost two decades, and some patient gentleness is required for proper gratitude and disentanglement. Strange, after all, isn't bad; it's simply...well...strange.

It's All in Having the Right Kind of Tools

2011-05-25T16:31:00.000-06:00

The problem, of course, with transforming the backyard of friends into your version of a farm is that you become hyper-sensitive about how it looks. It would be one thing if my seedlings were sprouting out on some random property off the highway, but given the fact that my 40-foot trenches were dug within sight of their sun porch means that they have become defacto agricultural landscaping. So yes, we mow the grass paths between the trenches, but that still leaves the edges. It is, I trust, a short term problem, as the flourishing plants will presumably and eventually spill out over the ragged edges. But at this point the naked shagginess requires some detailed attention.

We have tried the weed whacker - that gas-powered, twine-whirring whiz. But, alas, it's macro-trim, coupled with our unpracticed wielding has already decapitated nascent flowers and peppers. The world is already short on food; it can't afford such horticultural abortions. With a great deal more precision, we exchanged the weed-whacker for old-fashioned squeeze trimmers, but with 10 trenches that represents a lot of squeezing. Our hands can only dream of being that strong -- and our knees that padded! What is an aspiring farmer to do? How to keep my hosts happy and my body functioning: those are the questions.

The answer almost surely involves, as my late uncle routinely asserted, the right tools. In this case that means a rechargeable handheld grass trimmer, and a manual grass trimmer with an extension handle that enables trimming without stooping or dropping to our knees.

Why is it that no local store seems to carry either one?

Never fear: the internet is a wonderful thing. The latter will arrive on Friday; the former on Tuesday.

Life is good!

Hopefully the trimming will be as well.

Eternity in This Moment

2011-05-21T11:09:00.000-06:00

It is an odd thing to contemplate the End of the World. Today, after all, is the day all that is supposed to begin. I suppose I should feel chagrined that I have been up now for over an hour, am well into the enjoyment of my second cup of coffee, and am only now recalling the dire predictions.

I don't quite know what to think. Apparently there are only two options - being "Raptured" into bliss or being left to be embroiled in torment. To be sure, the whole timing issue has been murky for me, but here it is almost 8:30 a.m., and I am neither feeling any particular torment nor experiencing any supernatural transport. The birds are still fluttering and feeding just beyond the front porch and the cattle are mooing beyond the trees; the breeze is cool and the peacefulness is palpable. Is the Rapture scheduled for later in the day - after we have had breakfast, perhaps, so we can travel to paradise on a full stomach - or did the biblical calculators and code breakers get it wrong yet again?

If, as I suspect, it is the latter I don't quite know how to feel: relief or disappointment. After all, we have important plans for today that surely God would want us to see consummated - celebrating the 60 years of my parents' marriage. But, then, what are 60 years in the face of eternity? And aren't we supposed to be focused on eternity?

Well, despite all the hype and the titillating expectation, perhaps the answer is finally "no." Instead of spending every moment thinking about eternity, perhaps the divine intent is for us to spend eternity thinking about each moment - the gift that it is, the beauty it contains, the music of the spheres intrinsic in every every breath, blink, heartbeat and taste bud. Maybe God's most fervent desire is not that we spend all our time getting ready for something else, but treasuring the time that we have. And that the real torment is not something God imposes, but is the natural consequence of missing out.

So I think I will blow off the waiting and watching, and get on with the living - attentively, mindfully, gratefully.

Under the Music of the Wings

2011-05-19T07:07:00.000-06:00

I remember the feeling I had that first week as a smug music major in college, cradling between my chin and wrist a viola for the very first time. After years of guitar, piano and organ lessons, after an intensive high school choral experience that not only involved challenging vocalise but also music theory education, I felt like I pretty much knew this world of music. I was no tourist here, I was a native - my heart a rhythm instrument and my breath a tuning fork. But in a single awkward grip on an instrument foreign to me in the company of a dozen other freshmen, I found myself in a whole other country. Far, far from "knowing this music thing", it became disorientingly clear that I had merely scratched the surface.

Sitting this morning on a Berclair front porch dotted with bird feeders, I marvel at the complexity and diversity of birds fluttering mere feet away. The hummingbirds especially captivate and punctuate a sense of both awe and ignorance. It's not simply that there are so many, it's that they all seem so different - as though to comprehend that it narrows it down about as much to simply refer to them as "hummingbirds" as it does to say "stringed instruments". Only in the narrowest of ways does it limit the vast generality. Differing colors. Varying Shadings. Nuanced patterns.

So I sit here in the coolness of the morning, animated by the purring wings, unsophisticated enough to fully understand the wonder around me, but fully able, nonetheless, to appreciate and enjoy it.

Because Beauty Doesn't Last Forever

2011-05-16T06:49:00.001-06:00

It is Barrington who helped me notice the iris. That last morning in October I sat with him in the chair -- holding him, cherishing him -- I determined to notice the soft feel of his coat, the tender look of his eyes, the resilient flex of his ears...so I could remember. It was a life and death exercise in presence; paying close attention.

I thought of him again a few mornings ago when Tir led me out the front door onto the porch. In the flower bed off to the right was the yellow iris in full presentation. The bud had been teasing us for days with peeks of pigment escaping from the edges of its fist. This morning, however, while we slept it had relaxed and offered its full self to the birds or the sky or whomever might glance in its direction. And remembering Barrington's lesson that life and beauty are both fragile and fleeting, I made a point of accepting the gift the iris had worked these past several weeks to deliver -- the yellow, at once subtle and rich; the crepe petals folded gracefully into a still life ballet; the stem, sentry straight and tall.

In a different time and frame of mind I would have noticed the bloom, perhaps even mentioned its loveliness, but moved routinely on; forgetting how short is the life of beauty. Already the crab apple blossoms, so long expected, are all but gone, and the tulips are leaning and faded. But the peony bushes are still covered in balls, and the cucumber flowers portend summer fruit.

And just this morning, the lavender iris -- last evening yet but a promise and a tease -- had opened. I noticed, and I will treasure the joy of its splendor for however many hours or days it shares it. Because Barrington taught me the importance of paying close attention.

In the Ground and Growing -- Hopefully

2011-05-09T18:39:00.000-06:00

I know, I know. I haven't been writing. It's just that this gardening business is work. For the past couple of months my indulgent wife has tolerated seedlings and gro-lamps in the living room; over the past week, sans gro-lights, the little sprouts have spent increasing hours on the deck, "hardening off" as the gardening books call it. And now, just to telegraph our progress, I am in hopes that as of today there will be a little break -- but I'm not counting on it. As of today, the main garden and the deck are planted. Whew!

The main garden ended up 40-feet by 25-feet -- 10 trenches, including flowers. And just for the record, that trench digging is no picnic. Yesterday I shared with the congregation this little snapshot of the challenge:

The process had been demonstrated for me, and I had practiced with a mentor who had ultimately loaned me his equipment. But when I subsequently set it down on the ground that I would be planting and pulled the ignition rope, progress was miserably slow and tedious; and when the time we had was exhausted for the day, we were exhausted, too, with precious little having been accomplished. We were discouraged and maybe a little panicked about how we were going to get it all done.
The equipment was part of – if not the primary – problem. It seemed almost impotent in the face of the task at hand, and so when we got back home we began scouring the internet for better options. And the next morning we became the proud owners of a brand new tiller of our own – sharper, more powerful, more suited to the task. Reaching the garden site, I gassed it up, pulled the rope and smiled as its tines dug into the turf that had put up such formidable resistance the day before. The task was going well, and I was growing tentatively optimistic with every pass that I might just get this done, when suddenly the engine stalled. Pulling the rope, the engine quickly restarted, but died again only a few steps later – a pattern that repeated itself time and time again. Quickly my panic about the work still remaining returned with the bitter encroachment of unborn hope that was dying.

Even when it got easier, it wasn't easy. But finally the last one was finished, by yesterday afternoon the last seeds had been sprinkled, the last seedlings had been spaded in, and it was time to call it an evening. This morning Larry and I set up the fence netting -- plus an added little bit of deer discouragement -- supported the tomatoes and tomatillos, watered one last time, and I exhaled. If you are interested, you can view the layout online.

This afternoon, I tackled the deck garden -- those 20 PVC pipes, all but two of which are 4-inch pipes cut 40-inches tall and filled with soil. Lettuce, swiss chard, both purple and green tomatillos, various peppers, and tomatoes. Too many tomatoes. Between the garden and the deck, exceedingly too many tomatoes. But, we'll see. Who knows what will materialize?

For now, Tir thinks it is time for a rest. For the record, I agree.

One Final Adolescent Pause Before Spring

2011-04-18T08:14:00.000-06:00

The penultimate move. The tomatoes and the tomatillos were beginning to look like redwoods, towering out of their 4" pots, dusting the bulbs of the gro-lights suspended above them. Healthy, by all appearance, and aching skyward, the conclusion was unavoidable that the time had arrived for one last staging move. Steve had alerted me weeks ago to the need for multiple moves. It wouldn't be so easy as to poke a seed into some potting soil, water every now and then, and wait for the eventual day the weather permitted their relocation to the garden. There would be stages, each of which would require its own particular attention and intervention. Like any childhood, I suppose, each phase has its own work to accomplish -- crawling, walking, speaking, exploring, rebelling, until finally, if those prior phases have been worked well, thriving in maturity and bearing some kind of fruit. At this stage of my horticultural parenting, I can yet still only dream about the fruit. And I suspect I still have some rebellion to which I can look forward. But the little stems that once were tiny seeds are steadily growing up. They may not yet have reached adulthood, but are well into adolescence. "Sunrise; sunset..."

It was that "up" part that was preoccupying me. Having transplanted them once already, and with a few weeks still before the actual garden, it was time to make that penultimate move. To maximize root development, they needed more soil, which meant they needed a deeper setting, which meant they needed a taller nest. Large drinking cups were the appropriate solution, but a pass through Costco and Target left us empty handed. What we needed, it suddenly dawned on us, were some of those "generous" drinking cups that convenience stores offer. But we needed something like a dozen of the cups, and on this particular Sunday afternoon we weren't really quite that thirsty. Nevertheless, we pulled into a parking space at the nearest Kum and Go and, with our best "the worst they can do is say no" lack of inhibition, we scouted out the options near the beverage fountain, and approached the cashier. Wisely, I let Lori do the talking. "We are working on this gardening project," she began, "and we need to transplant our tomato seedlings into something larger. What would it cost to buy a dozen or so of these empty cups?"

"Well," the obviously flummoxed, but customer-centered employee responded, "probably nothing." With that, he proceeded to the beverage area, opened a cabinet and counted out 12 empty cups. Twelve 44 oz cups. Now we are talking "root capacity!" We positively giggled all the way home.

Now successfully rearranged and no doubt curiously getting acquainted with their new digs, the seedlings -- along with the rest of us -- are anxiously awaiting bona fide spring when roots can sink themselves into genuine soil, and reach legitimately toward the sky and not merely toward the ceiling. Maybe it is only natural that garden planting and graduations happen around the same time of year.

In the meantime, grow little roots. There are yet a few weeks to go. Eventually and surely the storms will come and the winds will blow and the predators will come and nibble at your leaves -- and worse. So grow -- grow deep. Soon enough you are going to need all the strength and nourishment you can provide.

Celestial Dawning in our Living Room

2011-03-20T13:47:00.001-06:00

We decided we needed more light. It wasn't so much an existential realization, but yet another gardening one. It had been that kind of a day. Earlier, we had tangentially filled up the 18 deck tubes with soil in preparation for their planting in the upcoming weeks. In the living room, the four-foot table supporting the seeding trays was busily soaking up the sun with a little reinforcement after sunset, but the grow-lights we had purchased were only marginally covering the seedlings -- and that only if we continued to move them around on the table every day or so. Given the facts that we were in the process of planting a few more seeds that Steve had mailed us, and that in the next day or two we would need to separate several of the already-leafing sprouts currently sharing space into compartments of their own, more light was going to be a necessity. The recent issue of Urban Farm magazine had a design for a build-it-yourself model, constructed from basic florescent shop light fixtures and 1 1/4" PVC pipe and connectors. We decided to give it a try.

Thanks to the helpful employee at Lowe's who was willing to saw our two 10-foot lengths of pipe into the prescribed permutations, and gather up the various "T's", "angles" and "ends," all we had to do was assemble and place. Now, with this addition of these 4 four-foot florescent bulbs to our previous 2 two-foot ones, our living room is aglow. It remains to be seen if the new light will coax seeds out of the soil, but it almost certainly is drawing neighbors out of their houses to ponder this new celestial phenomenon: the Aurora Borealis of Crown Colony Court.

Crop Report:
Cucumbers -- adding second generation of leaves
Brandywine Tomatoes -- strong, with true leaves
Green Zebra-striped Tomatoes -- questionable
Leeks -- wispy, but sturdy
Beets -- Hanging in there
Chard -- withered
Peppers -- encouraging
Flowers -- mixed bag

The Site in Sight

2011-03-14T11:20:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was "Selection Sunday" -- though not for me in the same sense that it was for the rest of the country. While basketball teams from coast to coast were biting their nails in anticipation of NCAA tournament invitations, Lori, Harold, Sandy and I were were tromping over the Ladd's property evaluating options for siting the garden. I felt like Goldilocks tasting porridge. One site was too wet. One site was too near the corn field that receives regular chemical sprays. One site was too shaded by surrounding trees...

...but eventually, one location seemed "just right." Nearer the house, the human activity might discourage at least some of the deer, the pellet evidence of which was ubiquitous around the property. Nearer the house also means nearer the water; and the storage building is easily accessible, as well. Once accomplished, the selection almost seemed to have selected itself. Yes, perhaps it is narrower than some of the alternatives, but it compensates in length. In any case, it offers plenty of space -- 40 X 20 feet was how we stepped it off, plus or minus. Good sun in both morning and afternoon, little shade; a slight slope for drainage; water, existing turf, and -- most importantly -- an invitation.

I deposited my new lawnmower (still in its box), and my new roll of net fencing (still in its box) in the storage building, took one last anticipatory look at the site, willing its fertility, and rejoined the others inside the house.

Later that evening I could hardly keep my mind off the seedlings busily sprouting under the lights on the table in the living room. Earlier in the weekend Lori had commented about how protective she has come to feel about the delicate little stems creeping above the soil. Ditto for me. Already we have a great deal of emotional energy, affection and anticipation invested in them. The prospect of freakish frosts, abusing winds, nibbling rabbits and deer and burrowing squirrels and moles feels a little like it did to drive out of the college dormitory parking lot the first time, leaving my children behind. Exposed; vulnerable; subject to all the vicissitudes of real life's independence; hoping -- praying -- that the parts over which a parent has any control in their raising will prove to be strong enough; praying that the parts over which parents have no control will not prove too destructive.

To be sure, "dropping off" my little seedlings is still some time away. It's weeks, yet, until the frost threat is safely past, and my wispy little green children still have lots of growing and strengthening to do. There will be thinning, yet, and separating and re-potting to allow for still sturdier roots.

But that eventual day is, nonetheless, approaching; and it's fun to move forward with a mental picture of where their roots will finally stretch. Rooted, stretching, and hopefully producing something edible.

All the odds against it, notwithstanding.

Tracing the Seeds of the Seeding

2011-03-07T08:39:00.003-06:00

Progress Report:
Swiss Chard sprouting wildly
Beets running a close second
Leeks whisping skyward
Green zebra stripe tomatoes progressing nicely
Brandywine tomatoes coming along
Finally some movement on the cucumbers
Marigolds, calendula, and sunflowers showing strength
Only two pepper sprouts.
Chiles holding firm at zilch. Zero. Come on, Anaheims, Anchos and pimientos! Do something!

So how did this madness begin? So far I have invested more in seeds than I care to confess. I have purchased grow-lights, net fencing, a reel mower, organic potting mix, seeding cells, and base materials for 18 growing tubes to be positioned on our deck.
...And untold numbers of books.
...Plus subscriptions to a couple of magazines.
And let me just add that none of it has been cheap.
Which is to say that I'd sure like to see some chiles.

How did all this begin? It's hard to untangle the threads of it all to isolate that single one. Indeed, perhaps it wasn't any single one, but rather the thickening accumulation of several. It certainly reaches back a couple of years to our burgeoning interest in cooking. Our culinary experience in Italy focused new light on real and fresh ingredients, which led to some heightened sensitivity to nutrition and health. Reading about the industrial food system added a sickening feeling about the meats and vegetables we routinely used, and our involvement in two Community Supported Agriculture farms honed my appreciation and my intrigue. More reading deepened my appreciation of agrarian values, and the grant work on terroir has put me intellectually spiritually in the thick of this passion.

But two awakenings dislodged me most violently from the relative safety and simplicity of my observational recliner. I have no recollection which came first -- or if, more likely, they simply confronted me together like friends and family at an intervention. One was the comprehension -- midwifed by the work of environmentalists armed with forecasts about peak oil, and readings about the simple mechanics of modern agriculture and its utter and complete dependence on cheap oil -- that food production as we have come to know it is unsustainable. I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime -- maybe not even in my children's lifetime -- but not very far down this road we will reach an agricultural dead end. If we can't any longer produce the fertilizers on which we have come to depend; if we couldn't transport it to or spread it on the fields it wouldn't do us any good even if we had it; if we couldn't fuel the equipment to harvest and transport it, it wouldn't do us any good to grow it; and then we would be stuck. Empty fields. Empty shelves. Empty pantries. Chances are that, shortly thereafter, we will get hungry, and hopefully somebody -- hopefully a lot of somebodies -- will still be around who remember how to grow something edible the old-fashioned way.

That is when the other hand slapped me: I wouldn't be one of them. I don't have a clue how this stuff happens. I grew up in the Hamburger Helper, blue-box mac and cheese generation quite thoroughly trained to gratefully receive my meals from the ever helpful food engineers at Betty Crocker, Duncan-Hines, General Mills, Swift, Kraft, Hormel, et al. They took care of all that "dirty work" and hassle; mine was simply the delicious job of boiling a little water, browning a little meat scraped off the styrofoam tray, microwaving a little of this or that, and enjoying. Well, at least eating. I have no idea how food really comes to be. In fact, save how to put some words together, and some musical notes, I don't know how to do much of anything.

And that sobering reality started keeping me up at night.
Until I couldn't stand it anymore.
I had caught a bad case of farm envy. Hatched in the deepest recesses of my soul was the disruptive determination to gain the holy experience -- to participate in the sacred synergy -- of putting food on the table, from literal start to finish. Soil to supper. Dirt to dinner. Bat guano, worm casings, sphagnum, patience, attentiveness and all.

And so the education has begun. Already I am unspeakably blessed. Not every guy has a wife so loving, so supportive and indulgent as to allow a seeding operation in the living room. And no nascent farmer with such a total absence of knowledge has any right to expect even a single germinated seed to give him such hope. But there this table stands: front and center in the living room, sprouting.

There is this other problem, of course. A loving and supportive wife I have; organic nutrients I can get. Grow-lights I can plug into a timer. But patience? That, shall I say, is a "growing edge."

That will have to be enough said for now. It's time to mist my crops again.

And pray.

Watching for Old Fashioned Growth

2011-02-25T08:12:00.000-06:00

Along the curiously winding path toward this whole "farming" endeavor was the Practical Farmers of Iowa annual conference that Lori and I attended in January. During the course of that helpful event we became fond of two elderly but quite enthusiastic gentlemen in the exhibit area marketing a "revolutionary" snake oil reputed to accentuate photosynthesis, thereby accelerating and strengthening plant growth. On a real farm you would apply it by the gallon. In our application, a mister would suffice. Of course we couldn't resist. We bought it and have been eagerly awaiting the growing season.

Not quite sure of what it is -- and the research documents we were given notwithstanding -- and not quite sure, therefore, of it ultimate safety ("absolutely organic and safe" we were promised), we took the road more cautious and declined application on anything edible. The flower seeds, however, were fair game. We set up a kind of "test plot", with one row of flower seeds getting regular mists of this elixir of the gods; the companion row getting H2O alone. All this, of course, was set in motion on Saturday when the grand seeding took place. Since that time, my days have been happily anchored around animated misting -- 3 if not 4 times per day; anytime the soil betrayed signs of drying. I am pursuing this project "by the book" since I have no experience, and the books say "keep the soil moist" -- a more challenging rubric than one might think. A "day job" sort of gets in the way.

So, the misting -- both ways. It was with some lament, then, that I jumped on a plane yesterday and left the "farming" to Lori. She is, of course, immanently qualified and capable -- at least if my own expertise is any measure -- so it wasn't concern as much as envy: she would get to tend and watch for precious signs of progress while I sat in day-long meetings.

Sure enough, then -- last night as I was getting ready for bed, my cell phone signaled the arrival of a message; a photograph, it turned out to be, from home, with the simple descriptor, "Growth!" Sure enough, there, plainly visible in the grainy cellphone camera close-up, was green. "Snake oil" green, it turns out. Yes, the only seeding cells so far showing any movement whatsoever are those nudged along by our super mist.

Now I am having second thoughts. Maybe we have been too cautious. Just think of the pumpkin-size tomatoes we could have had if we had only sprayed the stuff on those seeds; just think of the beanstalk we could have grown on which we could have almost certainly climbed to the heavens.

But, then, come to think of it that whole beanstalk thing came with it own share of problems. I reminded myself that I would be giddily content to see a tomato or a squash or an anything of any size at all sprout from one of these little seeds. And, at the end of the day, I would just as soon watch it happen the old-fashioned way -- with water and sun, and soil and care...

...and time.

Let the Growing Begin!

2011-02-20T17:53:00.001-06:00

Finally, they are in soil. When it came right down to it, it took more effort than I had anticipated -- psychologically, if not physically. For weeks, I have been accumulating seeds for my "farm." I have relished the several experiences of browsing through the catalogs, making my selections, and anticipating the deliveries. I have kept them bundled together in the box that contained the first shipment. I have accumulated supplies. I have counted the days, "anxious" in every sense of the word. Eager. Fearful. Apprehensive. Giddy. And then for purely irrational reasons -- impatience, a full moon, whatever -- I decided that yesterday was the day.

On my way home from meetings, I stopped at the garden store and assessed my options for soil. What a wonderland! This gardening thing is a linguist's paradise. I mean, where else do you get to toss around words like "sphagnum" and "peat"? Where else do you find labels celebrating and extolling the virtues of earthworm casings and bat guano? Even if nothing grows, I'll get to talk about all kinds of cool stuff.

Finally, it seemed like I was ready. I laid out the seeding cartons...and then decided I wasn't ready. I needed something under them or surely I would ruin the table. I removed the cartons, and spread out towels. And then I was ready...and then I wasn't. Wouldn't it be better to have some kind of plastic over the towels? Retrieving some rolls from the garage, I fashioned something as close to a waterproof membrane as I could manage. And then I was ready. I filled the cells with the casing and guano-rich soil...and then decided I wasn't ready. I was going to need a mister. As I was driving back from Target, it crossed my mind that something about my subconscious was imposing delay tactics. Perhaps like the way that saying something out loud makes it somehow more real, actually inserting a seed into soil represented a kind of commitment to this large and largely unknown undertaking; as if sowing a seed was tantamount to crossing a line of no return. As long as I was reading or shopping or studying or talking, I could pretend my way through this whole mythical farming/gardening undertaking. But actually planting a seed, staking in the identifying marking stick, and, yes, misting the whole undertaking -- all of sudden, this was real.

But, as with a marriage, I am now committed; "in" -- for better or for worse; the dirt under my nails standing in as an enduring and virtual equivalent of the ring upon my finger. Never mind that I hardly know what I'm doing, there is attention to pay; nurture to contribute; guidance to provide; knowledge to acquire; experience to gain; beginner's luck to appreciate and failures to learn from. It isn't imaginary anymore.

I know that the very thought is preposterous, but I almost felt a hint of disappointment when I woke and passed by my little tabletop foreshadowing of a garden and found no green emerging from the brown. After all, the very seeding had been so long in coming, it almost felt right that the seeds, themselves, would have somehow sensed the magnitude of the moment and hustled themselves into verdant growth. No, not even I really expected it. Even I know this much about the glacial pace of growing. But that didn't stop me from wistfully looking twice.

I have a hunch that this won't be my last lesson in the great and powerful discipline of patience. One more thing about which I have an almost infinite amount to learn. What I can for now is that I have started -- actually. No longer is it all about accumulation of supplies and tools and dreams. Suddenly it is real. The undertaking has commenced. And I can't seem to take my eyes off of it...

...or stop smiling.

Yes, But Can She Wrestle?

2011-02-18T09:35:00.001-06:00

The big news around here the last couple of days has been the match in the state wrestling tournament...that didn't happen. Joel Northrup of Linn-Mar of Marion drew Cedar Falls' Cassy Herkelman as his first-round opponent at the 112-pound weight in Class 3-A. A boy wrestling a girl. No word so far about Cassy's reaction -- by all assumptions, she was ready to go. It all, however, presented certain challenges for Joel. As a distant -- and even more dispassionate -- observer, I can sympathize with him. Don't get me wrong; I am fully aware that High School wrestling between the sexes has been going on since the beginning of time, though typically in quieter, more covert and typically more perfumed settings; not hardly sanctioned, coached, or conducted in front of thousands of screaming fans. Wrestling seems like an awfully slithery, grabby and feely contest that might best be confined to only the most affectionate or disinterested combatants. That, apparently, was Joel's sentiment as well. If you will pardon the pun, it just didn't feel right to him.

So, he forfeited the match.

In a statement released accounting for his decision, Joel wrote: “I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cassy and Megan (Black, the tournament’s other female entrant) and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times. As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner."

His Dad went on to clarify, "He wants to win state, just like anybody else, but his convictions and his beliefs are stronger than his desire to win state."

Everyone, of course, is weighing in on the topic. Some condemning the match-up as inappropriate by definition. Some have scoffed at Joel's reticence. I can't help but agree with Lori's Dad who mused that it was a lose-lose proposition for young Joel: if he lost to "a girl" he would never hear the end of it; if he won, the victory would always -- implicitly -- carry an asterisk beside it -- "triumph over 'a girl'." Whatever one thinks of the proprieties involved, it does seem sensible to just sit this one out.

I grieve for the guy. Nobody wants to arrive at the state tournament and lose out on one's dream -- let alone in the first round. But what saddens me more is the total absence of conversation about young Cassy's ability. We don't know if she is talented or a pretender. Typically match-ups are sliced and diced as the relative strengths and weaknesses are balanced. In this case, we have learned nothing about her skill -- only her gender.

Chances are, we knew that already.

"...Can't Buy Me Love"

2011-02-15T07:56:00.001-06:00

Several years ago I was part of a church mission group that traveled to a tiny Nicaraguan village that was completely "off the grid." A single hand-pumped water well in the center of the community was the only water available; there was no electricity -- in fact, there was precious little of anything except for a church, the several crude houses, and a tiny medical clinic that was the focus of our group's efforts for the week; those structures, plus the people who occupied and animated them with their living. There were no jobs, no "industry," and virtually no possessions beyond the few changes of clothing and the rudiments of necessity for cooking and repairing and gardening.

But -- and here is the mystery of it -- they were happy: happy within themselves, and happy together with each other. Even as I write those words I hear them to be inadequate. These were not happy people; they were people of joy. Suffice it to say that we fell in love with these people -- and were slightly in awe of them and their spirit. By Wednesday night of that week, after the work of the day was finished, after the evening meal shared and put away, we were sitting together as a group in the deep darkness pierced only by the stars above us reflecting together on our experiences thus far. What had we seen? What had we noticed? What had we learned? What had we felt? We talked about -- what else? -- the people, and we talked about their joy. Summing up our affection and also our compassion for them, one of us verbalized what many of us were thinking: "I just wish we could help these people." And then, after several moments of contemplative silence, another of us confessed, "I'm not sure that they are the ones that need the help. They are happy."

Somehow, we had discerned, in their emptiness they were full to running over.

I thought of that experience again while completing Ben Hewitt's engaging book, The Town That Food Saved: How One Community found Vitality in Local Food about the small Vermont town of Hardwick that, in the midst of all the usual problems faced by rural communities haunted by a once-vibrant past and few present opportunities, is finding some fresh glimmers of vitality. In his final chapter Hewitt writes:

"I believe that Hardwick is succeeding not in spite of its relative impoverishment, but because of it. What is happening in Hardwick does not happen in the absence of trust and collaboration, it does not happen without a shared sense of destiny. Call it vision, if you want... And I believe that this trust and collaboration are in no small ways social and cultural responses to economic hardship. Money does many things very well, and one of those things is to insulate us from each other. It becomes a safety net, and when we carry a s safety net made of cash, we allow the one made of community to slip through our fingers. By and large, the people of Hardwick have not had this luxury" (p. 219).

Money...successfully insulating us from each other. If our mutual indifference to and estrangement from each other as a culture and as a world is the mortal sin and grief I belief God sees it to be, then Hewitt's insight might turn out to be the core of what the Apostle Paul meant in his observation to Timothy that "the love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10).

I hardly know what to do with this wisdom -- I, who likes my toys, my creature comforts, as much as the next guy. And I don't mean this to glamorize or romanticize poverty. It all leads me to surmise, however, that a culture now almost totally and absolutely focused on the economy and accumulation of wealth -- when every vote that is cast and every policy decision made are predicated on a kind of slavery to the bottom line -- has gotten seriously and almost certainly mortally off track. We have bitten a very different apple, but the results, I suspect, will be the same.

The Beatles had it right all along -- for the whole of us: "I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love."

Two Roads Diverged...And I Took the One Leading to First Class

2011-02-13T17:24:00.001-06:00

In her sermon this morning, Suzanne observed how nice it would be if life were like a labyrinth: once you find the open path, there are no more decisions to make. You simply put one foot in front of the other, following the path, until you find your way to the center and back out again. Alas, she acknowledged, that's not the way it works.

I know. A couple of months ago I booked a flight to Fort Worth. Frustrated with fares I consider too high, I opted out of the two-hour direct flight in favor of the $200 cheaper one-stop through Minneapolis. It is, to be sure, a gamble anytime you add connecting points, but I don't take $200 lightly. When my return flight out of DFW yesterday was delayed, I calculated the implications for my second flight into Des Moines. It was going to be close. Landing in Minneapolis, I retrieved my checked carry on (no, I don't think that concept makes any sense either), noted span of gates I would need to traverse, and began to sprint. I arrived at the departing gate 10 minutes before the scheduled takeoff to find no passengers and no gate agent. Just as I was dialing Delta customer service, the gate agent emerged from the jet bridge. She guessed immediately who I was and said, "it may be too late, but let's try." She held the door open and together we sprinted toward the plane, only to arrive at the plane-side door to find the cabin door shut and the aircraft pulling away. Seconds too late.

What to do? The gate agent apologized profusely and began to click away at her computer. I thanked her for trying. She thanked me for not chewing her out. We shared a bonding laugh over our shared adventure and new-found camaraderie. She clicked some more, she smiled a devilish smile, clicked print, and handed me a boarding pass on the next plane out -- in 1st class -- plus meal vouchers for the afternoon. "Thanks again for being so nice," she said. "Thanks again for helping me out," I replied.

Suzanne was right: life is not a simple path that you casually follow until the end. From the choices we make about which airline tickets to buy, to the choices we make about how to handle adversity and disappointment and our interactions with one another, life is far less like a meditative labyrinth and far more like Robert Frost's two roads diverging in a yellow wood, the choice of which makes all the difference in the world.

Sometimes it even gets you into First Class.

Love and Lament in Surprising Co-Existence

2011-02-11T00:28:00.001-06:00

I have gotten into the habit, of late, of taking Tir to work with me -- Tir being our new Welsh Corgi puppy. Admittedly, the church office isn't the best or most appropriate setting for house-training a puppy, but the prospect of driving back and forth between church and home every couple of hours for the necessary "walks" seemed impractical and a poor use of time. In addition, then, to the desk and the book shelves and the conferencing cluster of chairs, a portable kennel. Several times each day I bundle up, attach the leash, dash down the back stairs and out the sidewalk door where we bustle around the next door lawn and the near neighborhood, getting a little exercise. So to speak.

This has been going on since that Wednesday morning in early December when we brought him back to Des Moines from his birth home in Stratford. I would like to report that he is becoming quite religious as a result of all this holy exposure, but the environment doesn't really seem to be rubbing off on him. He bites hands and snaps at pant legs; he unties shoes, talks back and seems fairly unrepentant about his occasional accidents. Maybe if he were baptized. Meanwhile, he enjoys kibitzing with the staff and the office volunteers who think he is adorable despite his bad habits. Truth be told, I think he is pretty darn cute as well, and I have been known to want to bite some people, myself. So maybe the humbler confession is that, while the office isn't rubbing off on him, I seem to be.

This week, however, I am gone. In anticipation, my co-workers were quite frank about their anticipation that, though I would hardly be missed, Tir certainly would be. The portable kennel, in other words, is empty this week, and quiet. In my absence, my beloved and indulging wife is picking up my slack. Tir is her full time responsibility -- morning, noon, and night. Her office, however, not being quite so amenable to co-habitation, she is making the repetitive trips back and forth on his behalf.

There is a sense, I confess, of almost luxuriant freedom in being away. There is, after all, a constancy to his dependance, and snowy winter days are not the most agreeable time to be traipsing in and out of doors. That said -- and no one could be more surprised at this than me -- I rather miss it. I miss his nuzzling cuddle when I pick him up from a lazy nap. I miss chaperoning his sociable curiosity about the various passersby outside on their way to class. I miss the little regimens of forced exercise throughout the day. I miss the bonding lap time and looking up, from time to time, and simply catching the melting site of him across the way. Simply put, I miss him. Over some small measure of inner resistance, I have fallen in love with him -- despite the darker sides of his puppiness.

The honest truth is I wasn't ready to have another dog. I was still too deep in the grief over losing one, and bringing home another one so soon felt a little like violation; like desecration; like trying to artificially or mechanically fill a craterous hole.

What I have found, however, is that my grieving quite naturally co-exists with my new loving -- neither negating the other; in fact, both honoring and blessing the other. It helps, of course, that despite their similar appearance, they couldn't be more different. Each is his own personality; each his own unique and commanding spirit. Neither is a cipher for the other. Both demand and claim their own attentions. Without contradiction, both laughter and tears, memory and joy, absence and presence occupy this common space, miraculously and mysteriously capacious enough to comfortably accommodate it all.

Guilty, then, over all the extra effort to which I am subjecting Lori during this personal time away, I am, at the same time, foolishly jealous. What a delight it will be to find my way home...

...to them both.

The Difference Between Engine Speed and Forward Progress

2011-02-09T23:46:00.001-06:00

It was snowing this morning; snow followed by sleet, answered by a few more whisps of snow. I'll admit I was slow about venturing out to make my way across town to the lecture. While I claim no special expertise with wintertime driving, I at least have some experience. I wasn't all that confident about the Texans who might be joining me on the roads, and I had low expectations of the road crews. How many snow plows and salt spreaders could there possibly be in Fort Worth? But after awhile I was ready to risk it.

What I found was better than expected. For one thing, there was scarcely a car on the road. For another, I had crow to eat with regard to the road crew. Someone and something had happened along to clear a path. Nearing the campus, however, the road took a serious incline, met with a four-way stop at the top of the hill. Momentum plus a little sand carried me up the hill, but the intersection, itself, had been neglected. From the stop sign, tires spun, finding little purchase. It was slow and lurching progress at the top of the hill.

Automakers like to brag about how fast their products can get from 0 to 60, but my guess is that none of them ever start their stopwatches while parked on ice. Reality here is less a race than a test of patient finesse.

I'm coming to the sense that most beginnings of any consequence have much in common with that moment in this morning's commute: sluggish inertia; spinning wheels on a sheet of ice trying to get up to speed; ephemeral traction; prodigious activity and a poverty of progress. The choice is either wiser, tempered, more strategic pacing, or panicky, stressed aggravation. Having some interest in new beginnings, perhaps the drive this morning was providentially instructive. There is an important difference between RPM and MPH -- between the tachometer and speedometer.

Note to self: beware the jackrabbit starts. Chances are you will get nowhere fast.

Fallow, That A Few More Words Might Yet Grow

2011-02-08T23:26:00.000-06:00

To quote the pop group America, from one of their hit songs of the early '70's, "I've been one poor correspondent." Indeed. It has been months since I have opened this site and applied, figuratively speaking, pen to paper. A few people have noticed. Gently, one recent Sunday morning, Jane mentioned that she missed reading. Others have been more cajoling. Mark recently wrote a tentative note, concerned, I think, that I had died. Perhaps, in a way, I had.

Some of the silence I don't really understand. There has been much worth writing about these past two months; much that has been wonderful and good and even provocative -- perhaps enough goodness, coming quickly enough, that I did not have the skill or the spiritual pacing to process it all faithfully and commendably. There was the trip to Stratford to pick out a new puppy; there were Advent preparations and observances. There was our joint thankfulness that this year's Christmas celebration didn't revolve around the hospital, coupled with the reflective and enduring gratitude for all that last year's hospitalization accomplished. There were eggrolls with the kids, and a floor covered with torn wrappings. There was the blessed closure to Christmas Eve -- locking the church doors after the 11 o'clock service and waiting in the car in the empty parking lot those few extra minutes and hearing the renovated tower chimes ring out Joy to the World followed by Silent Night as welcome to Christmas morning. There was the comic goodness of participating in the Practical Farmer's of Iowa annual meeting, and the happy laughter we enjoyed trying to discern if we even qualified for the "beginning farmer's luncheon"; ultimately concluding that our status was too premature to even be considered "beginning."There were the giddy evenings spent paging through seed catalogs, looking forward to the new adventures anticipated for spring. There have been nourishing meals playfully prepared and plans, with some trembling and much conversation, collaboratively made. And did I mention the puppy...and puppy kindergarten...and puppy whimpers in the middle of the night...and...

But there was, though I'm only beginning to comprehend and to name it, an intensifying need to rotate some inner crop, for the soil from which I had been drawing was depleting. I have seen the literal equivalent -- earthen powder become so gray and denatured that nothing can grow there absent those artificial steroids we spray over the acres and forcibly disc below the surface. The soil, in such a condition, is reduced to an empty matrix from which a few things can be forcibly extracted, but compared with its black and loamy counterpart teaming with organic matter, it can hardly be considered "alive." Such, I am recognizing, were whole hectares of my inner landscape, all the while so many good things were blossoming above the surface and taking root in other parts of my soul.

I don't mean this to sound like a sad story, and it is hardly an exceptional one; in truth it is a deeply rich and joyful one. Depleted soil is not the same thing as dead soil; it simply needs the time and the space and a little composted manure to revive. Manure, of course, is never hard to come by, never in short supply -- especially in church work -- but time and space can be elusive...until the soul simply takes matters into its own hand and asserts some fallow time. I have missed telling some good stories along the way, but maybe those untold stories have become some part of the organic matter ordained to make this space fecund again.

We'll see what all might grow along the way.

On the off-chance that you have been, thanks for waiting. I'm humbled by the patience, and eager to see what sprouts. Blessings.

It Does Have a Power Switch

2010-12-08T07:06:00.000-06:00

Yes, I use a Blackberry. And yes, I have been known to be...er, uh...distracted by it. Yesterday, after soliciting the room number of a hospital patient, I punched the "up" elevator call button and began to enter the room information into my phone. The elevator arrived surprisingly quickly, and without looking up I stepped through the open doors, still entering data. Two passengers already in the elevator stood silently until one of them, noticing my inattention, asked, "Are you going anywhere in particular?" Sheepishly, I put my phone away, pressed my floor selection and apologized. Yes, I could stand to pay more attention to what I'm doing.

But it isn't the phone's fault. I am the one who interrupts what I'm doing to attend to its various vibrations, tones, and blinking lights. I am the one who panics when I see the battery strength running low. I am the one who mentally checks out of long-running meetings to send a text message or carry on a surreptitious instant messaging conversation with my wife. I am my own distractional perpetrator, not the technological victim. So you'll understand my disconcerted amusement, then, to receive an email last evening from a company from whom I have purchased various Blackberry applications announcing the introduction of their newest product offering -- simply called "Freedom." But here, let me allow them to make their own pitch:

Are you a BlackBerry® addict?
Freedom is a simple productivity application that locks you away from using the phone function or the internet on your BlackBerry®. Freedom frees you from distractions, allowing you to have private time with your spouse, time to analyze, write or create. After the offline time is up, Freedom automatically restores all connections. You can choose the time: from a few minutes up to half a day.
Note: If you are in a case of emergency and you really need to make a phone call (e.g. call an ambulance) you can always reset your device by pulling out the battery. This is the only way that allows you to get all connections reinstated.
Gives you time to concentrate and focus.
Fix Freedom time in minutes.
Cuts off any interruption from your BlackBerry®: SMS, email, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, Social Feeds, BBM, news, weather info, etc.
Works with radio, WiFi, Bluetooth, GSM, CDMA, 3G, and more.

So let me get this straight: I open this application, set a designated time limit during which I "do not wish to be disturbed" -- during which I can be "productive" -- and the program completely disables the phone; something like a teacher confiscating a toy. Amazing, and all for only $2.99.

Or, here's a thought: I could exercise a little responsible self-discipline and simply turn the device Off.

A Flash of Heaven in the Window

2010-12-06T09:29:00.000-06:00

The house is nestled deep into an expanse of farm land that stretches like a horizontal painter's canvas almost as far as the eye can see -- flat and furrowed, the landscape dotted only sparsely by a barn and neighboring house or two. Out the back westward window is a view of an ox bow of the Missouri River that, generations ago, cut this looping extension which now welcomes -- at least on this afternoon -- thousands of Canada geese crowded into the deeper center where the spreading ice had not quite encroached. It was like an airport -- all evening flying "V's" would approach and, in landing, take the place of another recently departed. The next morning, a few random snow geese would sprinkle themselves in among the others, like salt accidentally spilled into pepper; but this evening it was all Canadian. Coming, going, convening.

Having traveled west for a work-related conference, we had bent our itinerary a little northward to visit a dear friend in whose West Des Moines backyard garden we had been married 13 years ago. A few years after that happy event, our hosts had sold the home in which they had raised their children and moved to Ellen's family farm on the western edge of the state. There they had carved this fresh homestead out of the legacy of an older one, borrowing from the cropland a little space for lawn and trees and windows and home where they could be grounded by the legacy, nourished by the ancient soil and entertained by the birds on the water. Many had thought it a curious move -- at their age -- to pack up and start over a distance from friends and associations and, not least of all, doctors. But Ellen was determined and Dale acquiesced and off they went and promptly settled in. If regrets ever nibbled around their edges, they never hinted at it. Home, now, in a different and deeper sort of way, they set their new lives in motion.

Now almost a decade later, we talked through the late afternoon; gathered together around a table -- Ellen's signature hospitality -- and talked some more. But as the sun set in the distance, the conversation had trouble competing with the streaking oranges and pinks and muted yellows filling the windows, and the fiery golds reflecting off the water, and the chorus of geese settling in for the night. It was almost grief that I felt when the last of the setting light faded, extinguishing the view. I wanted to search around for the control box into which I could drop a few coins to turn the lights back on for just a few more minutes of glory.

But it was night, and time not simply for the geese's rest, but our own. Even still I paused a moment to look out the now blackened windows, remembering.

If, as I mentioned, some had questioned the wisdom of such a move, staring out that window where all heaven had revealed itself just a mealtime ago, I couldn't help but assess them to be among the wisest people I know.

The Resemblance is More Than the Food

2010-11-25T07:38:00.000-06:00

We are traveling today. It isn't quite "over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go," but it is the general idea. We are gathering with family -- the first of a couple such assemblies over the next few days. In both cases our physical nexus will be the kitchen and the nearby table -- both involving far more culinary activity than is good for us -- but the familiar recipes will not be the only relevant assets; in fact, they won't even be the most important. The very fact that the recipes and the gatherings, themselves, have become "traditional" is indication that life has been lived and love has been forged through countless experiences, tiny and immense, that are worth recalling and repeating and sustaining.

I get sort of misty-eyed when one of the kids calls -- as Christopher did yesterday -- to ask about a certain recipe. In the absence today of both of their parents, the kids are hosting a Thanksgiving gathering for friends. Everyone is bringing something to the table, but among the things that my kids are bringing to that table are dishes they have traditionally enjoyed around ours. I treasure watching those threads get woven into their own chosen traditions. It gives me some hope that other things from our common life together have found residence in their souls beyond vegetable casseroles and smoked turkeys.

In all these gatherings and the logistical planning required to schedule and accomplish them, in all the traveling, in all the dirtied pots and pans and the crowded plates and mounded whipped cream, in all the stories retold and experiences remembered and and updates provided, in all the ruffled feathers and knowing glances and in all the parting embraces, we remind ourselves of the awesome, miraculous blessing that we have something to do with one another. And here, around these tables, convened with families by blood and families by choice, we remember and comprehend -- even when we might rather be somewhere else, and despite our capacity to get on each others nerves -- our connectedness is a precious and inseparable part of what makes us who we are.

And we are grateful. We have other blessings, to be sure -- indeed, our pens have inadequate ink, our tablets inadequate paper, and our days inadequate hours to list and count them. But the comprehension and affirmation of our relatedness -- that we are more than ourselves; indebted to more than our own efforts; nourished by more than our own gleanings; warmed and encouraged and comforted and cautioned by more than our own embrace -- is almost certainly the richest blessing we can know this side of heaven.

And the closest resemblance to it. No wonder scripture's favorite metaphor for it is a banquet.

Tapping A Latent Spirit of Revolution

2010-11-15T07:17:00.001-06:00

It's a little embarrassing that I feel so good about it. It simply shouldn't be this big of a deal. Alas, but it is.

Time gets sliced up and packaged in various familiar ways -- the Renaissance Period, the Romantic Period, the Industrial Age, the Age of Enlightenment; Modernism, Post-modernism, and then anyone's guess. The whole of my years could well be labeled "the Consumer Age." All my life the cultural forces have been aligned behind the impulse to shop. And I mean "all." Local churches and TV "ministries" have taken the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach, hawking all kinds of consumer goods. And even the government. When hijacked airliners were flown into New York skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, the best advice our elected leaders could offer was "get back out there and shop." Mine -- and certainly the ones who have come after -- is a generation bred and reared to do just that. Our closets are full, our car trunks are stuffed; thankfully entrepreneurs conceived of the genius to build rental storage units -- an enterprise for which previous generations had no use.

I would like to say that I have been above all this -- that I have eaten only when hungry; that I have purchased only out of need; that my closets could be used as bedrooms for all the extra space remaining -- but that is sadly not the case. I -- like every available storage area in my house -- am overweight. Shelves are crowded, closets are full, drawers can hardly close. Every now and then we reach a saturation point and load our cars for a deposit at Goodwill or the church's rummage sale; but it is like withdrawing a finger from the ocean -- it scarcely leaves a mark.

And so it was that, chilly outside, we opted yesterday afternoon to walk around the mall. We tied on our running shoes, drove across town, and commenced our stride. It was, to be sure, an intermittent pace. We stopped at William Sonoma; we stopped at the Apple Store; and here; and there. We felt the seduction...

...and walked away. Perhaps it was the echo of Stephen Covey (of 7 Habits fame) encouraging us to put some distance between stimulus and response; perhaps it was the vivid recollection of our already crowded shelves; perhaps it was a new-found frugality that simply didn't want to spend the money. Or perhaps -- and this is actually my hope -- we simply recognized that we needed nothing that we saw.

It's counter-cultural, I know. But having spent my formative years in the '60's, revolution is in my bones.

Climbing out of the rut in order to find a new groove

2010-10-30T17:22:00.000-06:00

There's a very fine line
Between a groove and rut
Christine Lavin, "Prisoners of their Hairdos"

With Lori early on her way to Minneapolis, me trying to sustain a revived exercise discipline, and a beautiful autumn day unfolding outside, I thought I would take a walk around Gray's Lake. After all, I will get plenty of opportunities to take advantage of the exercise equipment in the basement; these are days to seize the beautiful outdoors while the temperatures still attract. So, I threw on some sweats, jumped in the car, parked and started my brisk walk.

That's when it hit me: the day is beautiful and crisp; I was after some exercise; why in the world did I jump in my car to navigate the less-than-a-quarter-mile between my house and the lake? I wasn't pressed for time. I no longer have a dog to transport. It's an easy trek over to the trail. The weather is beckoning. I couldn't think of a single explanation for my behavior other than habit. I jump into the car as a matter of course. Apparently, without even thinking about it.

It started me thinking about the myriad other stupid things I do without so much as a thought -- "stupid" at least as it pertains to the environment, personal health, financial responsibility, as well as common sense. I have habitualized ease, sacrificing prudence as an expendable price.

But as I made my way around the glassy lake under a sunlit sky, there was another, more blessed, insight. If so much of my lifestyle is rutted by mindless habit, imagine how much could change by simply paying attention...

...to where I go, and how I how I get there;

...to what I eat, and how I prepare it;

...to who I encounter, and the subtleties written on their face.

I think it was Robert McAfee Brown who observed that "where you stand determines what you see; who you listen to determines what you hear; and what you do determines who you are."

As embarrassing as it was to sit back down in my car to accomplish the short drive home, it was comforting to think that at least I am standing in a different place, seeing life differently; listening to different people and hearing something fresh; and at least trying to do things a little differently in order to become a better "me."

...

Discharged from the Assisted Living Tour

2010-10-25T09:42:00.001-06:00

OK, so the joke is quickly losing its humor.

Yesterday I began the sermon by recounting a conversation we had overheard while boarding a plane home from vacation between two twenty-somethings; one of whom had apparently just gotten a new job. The question was eventually raised about the person who had previously been in the job.

“He had been there about 9 years, and apparently was a really nice guy – everybody seemed to like him a lot – but he was a really old guy – you know, like 55 – and had apparently lost his enthusiasm.”

A “really old guy – like 55.” I confessed how I had wanted to turn around and smack the guy, but at 54 I no longer had the strength; that it was all I could do to simply totter of the jetway and collapse into the plane.

Ha! Ha! Ha! It was funny. Everybody laughed. I went on, with any luck, to make some relevant point.

Our day ended with the joy of attending a concert by The Eagles, my all-time favorite rock band which had so influenced my musical youth. It has only been as an adult that I have gotten to hear them in concert -- long after their glory days, their eventual breakup, and eventual reunion. This would be my third time to share their company for an evening. We parked, we passed through the doors, we found our seats, and eventually -- finally -- the lights darkened, silhouetted shapes took their places on the stage, a spotlight illuminated founding member Glen Frey who welcomed the audience and encouraged everyone to check their tickets: "This is the Eagles Assisted Living Tour..." he announced. It was funny. Everyone laughed -- all 15,000 or so us. Everyone laughed again, later in the concert, when Don Henley announced that there would be a short intermission. "Hey," he mused, "we're getting old. We need to take a rest." The guy seated behind us cracked that, given their age, they all needed to head back stage and hit the restroom. Clever.

Now this morning I open my email to find today's poem-of-the-day to which I subscribe, sent to me from The Writer's Almanac and Garrison Keillor. Today's contribution is a poem title "Old Men" by Ken Hada, and begins...

I make it a point now
to wave to old men I pass
old men standing in shade
of a yard, maybe
a daughter's place
where now he's just a tenant

trying to understand role reversal.

Enough, already.

On the wall at the vet's office where we have spent so much time in recent months is a framed poster showing a frolicking dog, with the caption, "We don't stop having fun because we grow old; we grow because we stop having fun."

Despite, then, the age that I occasionally feel, I'm still having fun -- and fully intend to continue in that endeavor, so I think I will take the veterinary wisdom to heart and set aside all this humor of decrepitude.

And get on with the fun of living.

Seat-belted into that Great and Frenzied Bathroom in the Sky

2010-10-23T07:29:00.003-06:00

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

That must surely be the explanation. I am insane. I keep purchasing airline tickets, and keep expecting to arrive at my destination at the advertised time. Sick, foolish, delusional me. But if I am thusly afflicted, the disease appears to be contagious and epidemic. We are crowding airports by the bejillions, sacrificing otherwise perfectly useful hours and larger and larger sums of money for the privilege of subjecting ourselves to degradation, humiliation, aggravation and disappointment on the illusory promise of "travel". Just enough actual transport does occur to keep us tantalized enough to risk it again, but the bargain turns out to be more Faustian than rational. I looked around in the Detroit airport in our layover between "flights" and felt this sickening realization of the depths of depravity to which this kind of "travel" reduces otherwise intelligent human beings. All around us people were driveling nonsense into cell-phone conversations, somehow lobotomized by the process into forgetting that people were all around them listening in. And running -- as though for their lives; dashing red-faced down escalators, pushing and shoving their way through the crowds, brainwashed to believe it might accrue to them some credit or measure of advantage.

And of course it's utterly one-sided. I never see airline personnel running. If the "traveler" is even minutes late, the penalties are draconian. But the airline recognizes no reciprocal constraint. Maybe they will fly; maybe they won't -- and maybe it will happen at this or that gate. They can't really say for sure. But if they deign to make a go of it, you had better be there on the spot, ready to sardine yourself into that tube that may or may not eventually pull up its wheels. Even the rubrics are Orwellian "double-speak" -- those fabled "on time departures" and "on time arrivals" the airlines strive so vigorously to achieve defined in no material way that bears any real resemblance to the time the passengers actually leave the ground or disembark from the plane. Despite the second chances and benefits of the doubt that we seem continuously willing to extend to the airline industry, I've got to imagine that satisfaction rates are somewhere in the nether regions east of the decimal point on a scale of 1 - 10. Insanity.

Our most recent outbreak of this disease occurred at the hands of Delta Airlines -- but not really; it was actually at the hands of Mesaba Airlines, the slow drip affiliate partner of Delta that "serves" our airport. "Mesaba" I think being the native airline word translated, "Maybe; Maybe not." I have always been amazed at how precisely to the minute airlines advertise departures and arrivals -- "6:21 a.m."; "8:03 p.m." And I suppose their planes do take off and land at particular minutes -- they just make no guarantees as to the day on which it might happen, or whether it will be the a.m. or p.m. listed in the schedule.

The truth of the matter is that we had a wonderful -- beautiful -- vacation in Vermont, with only two exceptions: getting there, and getting home. While adjectives flow effusively painting the memories of leaves and mountainsides and waterfalls and streams, I'll not even struggle to look for the words to actually describe the transportational debacle bookending either side. "Numbing" is the only one that comes to mind. One of these days I will realize how grateful I should be that I arrived home only 4 hours later than promised, just as I should appreciate beginning my vacation a mere 7 hours late. I shouldn't complain about the smell of vomit left behind from a previous passenger's airsickness that meant flying home in the equivalent of a fraternity house bathroom on Sunday morning. And to their credit, they did "serve" us that proud little pouch of peanuts with an accompanying thimble of pop, though I didn't dare consume them, lest my forced wedge into the Lilliputian "seat" become irreversible.

Perhaps such experiences are leading me to the next big learning from all this reading and study I have been doing on the subject of terroir -- the taste of place and the importance of being intimately connected to a particular place. The lesson could well be that I should stay closer to this place; that any considered destination which can't be reached within a reasonable time-frame by car should be the limited and well-vetted exception, rather than the matter-of-fact norm.

Such a lifestyle may well be less exotic, but will surely involve less aggravation. And restore me to some measure of sanity.

Until Next Time

2010-10-22T06:29:00.000-06:00

Ok, then; until next time. It has been restful; it has been renewing; it has been beautiful and quiet and nourishing and absolutely indulgent. It has, after all, been our gift to each other -- a sort of "combo" package rolling anniversary and Christmas presents into one glorious experience. Others, I understand, give different kinds of gifts, but our favorites -- our treasures -- are experiences. The only things tangible -- material -- about these gifts is a boarding pass and a room key. And unlike most of the other gifts I have received, I never have difficulty finding a place to put ones like this; there is always plenty of space in the memory section of my mind and my soul.

There is, of course, always the melancholy of leaving. There always comes that sobering day when the suitcases must get refilled, the innkeepers must be told goodbye, and we exchange the tranquility of the leaves and the streams and the mountainsides and the waterfalls for the jarring, psychological collision of airport check-in, security, and boarding. There is no such thing, anymore, as a gentle re-entry -- more like the old NASA Gemini and Apollo "splashdowns" in the ocean circled by waiting ships ready to pluck you out of the water and put you back to work.

Last night, then, as the anticipated conclusion of one more day drinking in the colored lanes and rocky streams, we indulged ourselves in a final glorious, gastronomic adventure. Like the last episode of a long running television series, featured guests made surprising cameo appearances -- Lisa and her mother, Jane, from Jersey Girls Dairy; Frank and his wife from Blackwatch Farms; Erin, who in previous years has worked at the inn, was already seated with her husband.

Having submitted our general order, the waitress returned with instructions to ask if it would be alright if the chef veered a bit "off menu." As far as we are concerned, that is always a good sign. "Yes!" we responded, and waited with anticipation. We were dining with new friends -- introduced to one another as we returned from our adventures. Having found synergies of interest and companionable temperaments, we agreed to share a dinner table. And for the next few hours, we "oohed" and "awed" and exclaimed out loud as the chef sent out one creation after another.

And then it was dessert -- which, among other delights, included a stick of maple cotton candy. Really. We couldn't help bursting out in laughter. The very idea of dessert, of course, felt somehow redundant; the entire week, after all, has felt like confection. Sweet, smooth, delicious, and wonderfully over the top. When Chef Jason stepped out to say hello, all we could do was applaud. It been the culinary equivalent of the fireworks finale on the 4th of July.

Finally, against our strongest wishes, we pushed ourselves away from the table, sent best wishes alongside our new friends, hugged goodbye the waitstaff, and made our way upstairs.

And so until next time. In the meantime, we have the photographs, a head and heart full of memories, a few new email addresses, the sight of falling flakes of snow as we leave, and the scent of anticipation.

Brushed by the Pollen of a Colleague in Bloom

2010-10-21T06:56:00.003-06:00

"Would you like me to take the picture?" he asked, and of course the answer was yes. We had driven down to Brattleboro, an interesting town spilling out of the hills of southern Vermont into the Connecticut River. The eventual nexus of the trip was intended to be lunch at the cafe nestled precisely over the elbow of the river, but of course after leisurely strolling the main street and turning the corner toward lunch we discovered that one of the two days each week the cafe is closed was this one. No worries, since lunch had been merely an excuse to visit again the town and drink in again the view of the river. The former we could satisfy elsewhere, and the latter could be equally accomplished from the bridge nearby.

It was there, during repeated attempts at taking long-armed pictures of ourselves with the river view as background that the passerby volunteered his question. We accepted, we posed, he snapped, and then we undertook the obligatory smalltalk. "Are you visiting?" "Where are you from?" Etc. And as usual we found ourselves living in a very small world. Steve, our new photographer, had taught at the University of Iowa, among other places, on environmental conservation, among other things, and just like that we felt we had been brushed with the pollen of a passing bee. For the second in as many days we had bumped into a new acquaintance with sympathetic passions.

Yesterday, at the dairy farm, it was Maria, a teacher from New York state taking a leave-of-absence to research and write about the precious and often precarious pathway of our food from farm to table, and the valiant, often sacrificial endeavors of those closest to the soil, the animals, and the vicissitudes of nature. We agreed to keep in touch -- fellow encouragers, if nothing else, which is no small thing. This next day it was Steve, whose photographic assistance turned into a leisurely stroll and a long corner conversation waiting for the Amtrak train to move on past the station and the road crossing. He told us about his work; we spoke of our growing interests; we promised to keep in touch -- learners, affirmers, stimulating pollen of compatible blossoms.

We did, eventually, find our lunch -- a sandwich at a bakery to which Steve had directed us, with its own view of the river -- and then we were off to Walpole for ice cream, and then to Grafton for a long walk in the woods. By that point we would have calories to burn away, and lots of conversation to share.

The Crazy Act of Returning

2010-10-20T05:14:00.002-06:00

From the outside looking in there is an unmistakable element of craziness to the enterprise. In our second visit this week to the dairy farm -- my third sense spending an afternoon there in August -- we were struck afresh by the confining physicality of the relentless work, and were sobered again by the financial sacrifices chewed up by the "business." But, of course, Lisa would chafe at the label. This isn't, she would argue, a business; it is...

...actually, I'm not yet sure what she would call it. Watching her, listening to her, following her around while she chatters and works and rants and raves about the constraints of government policy and the willful ignorance of the public and the soulless, extractive profit-taking of corporate agribusiness, words like "passion" and "crusade" and "vocation" spring quickly to mind. But she tends not to talk that self-reflectively. She prefers to talk about the cows -- their particular behavior patterns, their unique and individual personalities -- the milk, the science, laments about the deleterious effects of "nourishment" as moderns now try to satisfy it, and the importance of knowing your farmer. Her website trumpets almost nothing about herself and her operation; using the space instead to provide links, in almost shouting font sizes and styles, to a petition advocating "Food Democracy Now", an article detailing the reasons not to drink pasteurized milk, along with the various support and advocacy associations of which she is a member. This is, in other words, more of a Cause than a Career; a lifestyle and calling than a way to pay the bills -- several common necessities of which, because of the tight economics involved, she simply chooses to do without. She is more concerned with her cows' comfort than her own.

It is easy to see why her mother thinks she is working too hard. Any reasonable assessment would agree. Except, Lisa would argue, when the reasons are as compelling as these 20 or so Jersey cows and their insatiably cavernous stomachs and swelling udders that get her out of bed in the mornings and fill her hours each day with energy, devotion, passion and purpose.

And pure, precious milk.

It is, I suppose, crazy; but probably not as crazy as me being less intrigued by it all as moved; and being drawn back to it time and again.

Not so much envious, as deeply appreciative...

...and awed; as though I haven't so much been tromping through the muck of a farm, as bowing in a very precious sanctuary.

Nostalgia as the Excuse, but Not the Destination

2010-10-19T20:28:00.000-06:00

Highway 100 is routinely mentioned as one of the most scenic routes in Vermont. Little had we known almost 13 years ago when we drifted down to Waitsfield from our honeymoon destination further up in Stowe that we were on the beauty trail,. We only knew that it was an idyllic little village that warranted a parking place and a stop for lunch. Today, all these years later, we targeted it as the northernmost focal point of our venture up VT-100. We had the day, a full tank of gas, and the draw of nostalgia to move us northward.

Indeed, they proved to be miles and memories worth the investment of the day, alongside rivers, waterfalls, and what felt like wave after wave of colored hillsides nudging our little vessel along the currents of autumn. Once in Waitsfield, we absorbed the community update volunteered by the gift shop owner otherwise busy painting her 26th year of wooden ornaments just off the highway. We took her advice for lunch, but passed on the ornaments. After a quick walk around town, we were ready for the road home.

It was, after all, the serendipitous lake, barely 30 minutes away from our starting point, not the town, well over an hour further down the road, that had captured our imagination on the drive north. Echo Lake, more linear than geometrical, stretches along the road just outside Plymouth, the birthplace of Calvin Coolidge. The still water offers itself as a horizontal canvas for the sloping palette of trees circling and rising above it; the mountainous colors duplicated in the reflection. It was this lake that finally drew us out of the car and into its enveloping silence for a hike, an absorbing view along its edge, and the tearing sound in the soul as we eventually drove away. The placid lake, and its almost photographic duplication of the golds, the yellows, the greens and reds above it.

I don't know where we will go tomorrow, but we can only pray for an equal serendipity to remind us of the value of a flexible vision, attentive eyes, and a willingness to park where memory has not already paved the way and rutted the view.

Happily Lost and Finding our Way

2010-10-18T19:47:00.001-06:00

We got lost, although the consequence was hardly catastrophic. Traveling south on Vermont 5, we had parked at a roadside pull-off to get a more patient look at some red-leafed maples. Reds are thinning by this time in the season, and a stand of consecutive maples had caught our attention. After a few minutes of quiet absorption we walked on alongside the road, enjoying the closer connection and the more pedestrian pace. It was only then that we had seen the small sign marking entrance to Pinnacle Trail. A narrow entrance, we hadn't noticed it from the car. No one was expecting us, and time was our own, so we stepped away from the pavement and into the woods and the leaf carpeted trail that, according to the sign, led .5 miles to the summit. There were a few rocky climbs, but the surrounding birches and and pines and hemlock, oaks and maples and shaded hillside meadows beckoned in. We found our rhythm, forgot about the car, and walked.

We had been doing a careful job of following the blazes marking the trail, signaling lanes and switchbacks, but near what must have been the half-way point we suddenly stopped. "Where is the trail?" I asked -- as much to myself as to Lori. We pecked around, but the absent trail became undeniable. The clearing had suddenly petered out into a thicket cluttered with felled trees and undergrowth. How could we have missed the marking? It would be convenient to blame poor trail maintenance, or the obscuring effects of stormy weather that had recently passed through the area. The truth, however, was closer at hand: we had simply become engaged in animated conversation, and had grown too preoccupied with watching our feet to pay guiding attention to where we were going. Both were understandable. We enjoy, after all -- indeed treasure -- the company of each other. And the terrain was uneven -- rocks and veiling leaves, twigs and branches, inclines and erosions. Neither of us wanted a twisted ankle, or a rump-a-coaster slide down the hillside. We were paying close attention to each step.

But as a consequence, paying such attention to where we were, we lost sight of where we were going. Backtracking, the damage was easily repaired. We had simply zigged when we needed to zag. The turn took us higher and deeper and more fully into the shower of falling leaves. It was glorious; better, to be sure, than the dead end, but only somewhat. It, too, had been into the woods, among the trees and under the leaves, in each other's company, in the crispness of an autumn in Vermont. If the ultimate goal had been that important we would have had some points deducted. As it was, the primary objective was simply to enjoy the day and one another; and toward that end we were earning a perfect score. That we eventually claimed the summit and its view of the Connecticut River down and across the way was only bonus, hardly the prize, itself.

Drinking in the view and savoring the moment, we joined hands and picked our way back down, toward the mouth of the trail and our car waiting beyond -- nourished, satisfied, and smiling; still talking, but paying, perhaps, less attention to our feet and more to the wonders -- and markings -- surrounding

Grateful to the Leaves for Holding On

2010-10-17T16:36:00.002-06:00

Driving north on Vermont 106, the hillside colors explode in the morning sun. Locals would almost certainly say that the "peak" of color has passed, but the view is electrifying to us. We have traveled hard to get here -- enduring equipment malfunctions, missed flights, rerouted schedules, lost hours and a missed dinner that we had been 12-months looking forward to. A few bare trees are not going to dampen our enthusiasm. We drive patiently, attentively, appreciatively.

Banks of roadside trees intrude on the pavement, almost fighting for attention; as if to say, "Look at me; look at me!" Streams gurgle along on either side, oblivious to the stones that litter and ultimately pave their way. Birch trees stretch tall and upright, as though chastened for poor posture -- or more likely, basking in every glimmer of autumn sun. It is an ocean of neon yellows, warm coppers and reds, deep greens and white trunks. The blue sky and the sweeping hillsides have endured waves of rain, whipping winds and a dusting of snow; holding on until we could get here. Perhaps they are wearying -- winter, after all, is almost certainly on its way. But today -- Sunday -- their intrinsic glory is worship enough; almost hymnic. No wonder we began the morning spontaneously singing, "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation."

The little shiver might have something to do with the morning chill in the air, or it could simply be that we are euphorically, speechlessly, reverently...

...grateful. Amen.

The Cowlicked Kindness of Strangers

2010-10-17T16:01:00.002-06:00

I didn't catch his name, but our acquaintance wasn't social. It was purely a matter of necessity. After boarding our plane, only to be disgorged several minutes later because of equipment problems; after waiting for an update, booking an alternative schedule only to have it, too, evaporate for lack of a plane, the airline hired him to drive us to Omaha to catch a flight from there. Weary of the wait and the associated drama, we were, despite the nuisance involved in the two-hour ferry west, happy for a solution that required no more effort from us and still delivered us to our destination on the same calendar square as originally intended.

I later thought how naively trusting we must be to tumble into the minivan of this total stranger whose hair cowlicking in interesting directions suggested very recent entanglement with pillows and sheets. But I don't suppose I am any better acquainted with any of the pilots who were prepared to elevate me upwards of 37,000 feet. By comparison, hurtling down I-80 at 70 miles-per-hour seems like child's play. The reality is that I put my life into the hands of all kinds of total strangers. This shuttle driver was simply the most immediate, and so we positioned our luggage on top of the junk piled in the back end of of his van, buckled up and sucked it up.

Despite his nocturnal appearance, he told us that he had been at work when he got the call -- "work" being an auto mechanic at the body shop of a friend. We asked how often he does this sort of thing, though I never really heard an explicit answer. Maybe the airline swears him to secrecy on that delicate subject. However often it happens, I thought to myself that it didn't sounds like the kind of job for which I would want to trade: random calls to transport otherwise decent people ground down by the vicissitudes of "modern" travel into beleaguered grumps; two hours of testy silence, followed by two more lonely hours back along the same stretch of road. But, then, he probably wouldn't want my job either. That said, there are those times, every now and then, when a few quiet hours behind the wheel might would be therapeutic. And I guess most people would love a crack at a pulpit at least once in their life.

However undesirable I might find his job, he successfully performed it -- arriving at the Omaha airport in ample time for us to make our substitute flight. I think we thanked him, but I'm not altogether sure. With the low expectations of a veteran of such trips, he waved to us a courteous "goodbye" and settled back behind the wheel and pulled away from the curb. And it's true that we didn't tip him -- I figured that was the airline's business -- but if it hadn't been buried within my suitcase I would have made him a gift of my hairbrush. And a smile. Everyone deserves a smile -- especially a shade tree mechanic on a bad hair day who had the grace to let us sleep in his back seat while bridging our first leg to Vermont.

For the Indescribable Blessing He Has Been

2010-10-09T05:24:00.000-06:00

It had, we knew, been months in coming, though we tried our best not to dwell on its approach. We leaned into the mindfulness -- the sacredness -- of each day; grateful for the gift of however many we would be blessed to have. Even the most routine dimensions -- opening the food cans, preparing the pills, filling the water dish -- seemed special; the occasional sickness cleanup, a privilege. Which is to say that we tried our best to pay attention -- to the feel of the coat, the look of the eyes, the scamper of the feet across the hardwood floor, the commonest mannerisms of everyday. But since March, when the Vet soberly told us that Barrington had lymphoma, we have been conscious of this dark and inexorable approach. Chemotherapy and eventually acupuncture notwithstanding, there was a thunderous "YES" that would, one indeterminate day, overspeak our determined "NO."

Which is not to suggest that we were prepared when the day finally confronted us. We simply had no more conscionable ways to delay it. The cancer, as the Vet would later describe it, was moving faster than the medicine, and was pathetically overtaking him. The day, then, dawned with a sober resignation and acquiescent submission. And to our eternal gratitude, it was, despite our dread of it, the loveliest experience that anyone could ask for.

When we arrived, the young women working the reception area were already crying. Though we always believed that Barrington was incredibly special, their affection through the years had always seconded our admittedly biased opinion. He had always hurried through the weigh-in so that he could hustle behind the counter for a greeting -- and perhaps a treat. They knew his name, welcomed his kisses, and indulged his nosey affection. This day, however, their halting greetings were sober; one kept her back to us, though the tissue at her eye and the trembling of her shoulders betrayed the grief that permeated the room. The doctors emerged from the back -- two of them; their number born out of affection, not necessity -- explained the steps and showed us into the room that had been prepared for us. They accomplished the initial procedures, and then waited for us, encouraged us, appreciated us, comforted us -- their tears flowing along with ours. We stroked his fur, we held held him as gently as the forcefulness of our love would allow, we gazed into his eyes, we spoke his name. Finally, we nodded to each other, and then to the doctors.

And he relaxed. And then he relaxed some more, easing into peacefulness with the same gentle, submissive grace as he had lived the whole of his life. "He has passed," one of the doctors confirmed, and, through our sobbing, we marveled at the beauty of it all.

The absence already is thunderous, in the little and countless ways we knew, but now realize in greater contrast, our lives were ordered around his company. There is a stillness; an almost aimlessness that attends, absent his schedule and presence to guide us. Our lives, we remembered, were practically perfect before he came to us, a recognition at the core of any hesitancy we felt about having a dog in the first place. It's not that we don't know how to be happy without him, or won't find the ways to recover it. It's just that he added a dimension -- a color, a flavor -- we fully realize will be irreplaceable. In the end, it wasn't merely the addition of a dog that made the difference; it was the particularity of Barrington.

Barrington, who came into our lives with a drooped forward ear and a barnyard smell, and left our lives with a hole the size of heaven itself. The only emotion stronger, just now, than our grief -- the only force sharp enough to cut through our tears -- is gratitude...

...for the joy that he has inspired...
...the love that he has returned...
...the forgiveness he has never hesitated to offer...
...and the blessing -- the finally indescribable blessing -- that he has been.

An Appetite for the Taste of Something Real

2010-09-06T08:44:00.004-06:00

"The things most worth wanting are not available everywhere all the time."
---Alice Waters

I have lived under the perception that "hunger," "desire," "longing" were negatives to be eradicated; deficiencies to be overcome. The object, I assumed, was to reach some state of perpetual satisfaction -- without need, without want, without limitation.

Apparently, I have not been alone. This valiant quest has given us strawberries and asparagus in January and apples in June. But what it has also given us is the illusion of satisfaction. Tomatoes grown in water in January indeed mature and ripen; they just acquire no taste in the process. Sure, strawberries can be picked green one place in the world and shipped to another -- ripening, in a way, along the journey with some chemical manipulation -- but they won't taste like strawberries.

Along that same way, we forget what real things taste like. We have what we wanted, but only in a sense. The thing we really wanted still eludes us; a mutually agreed upon impostor in its place. And we settle. We accept the illusion -- in a way like choosing to live in a Hollywood movie set. It's all facade, but at least it looks handsome and real.

All of which strikes me as being not just a culinary problem, but finally a spiritual one; something somehow near the category of sin. Perhaps it is something related to the dynamic of idolatry in which a crude but accessible reasonable facsimile takes the place of the more elusive and uncontrollable real thing. Perhaps it is the arrogance of wanting the world on our terms -- chafing against the constraints of creaturely status and its concomitant aspiration to "be in charge." Wasn't that, after all, the sin of Adam and Eve, and the laborers at Babel?

There is a fine and precarious line between employing our God-given ingenuity and organizing a coup against heaven -- a narrow thread that separates the imitational aspiration to be "like God" and the imperialistic quest be "be God." And quite possibly it is a line we only recognize in retrospect.

As we now are coming to recognize in our food. That line is now behind us, not ahead; one we no longer anticipate, but have already crossed.

Perhaps our hungers -- and our nobler desires -- are not negatives after all; and were not only designed to nudge us toward nourishment and satisfaction, but were created into us to teach us patience -- and to help remind us about, and keep track of, what is real and genuinely tasty...

...and worth wanting in the first place.

A Foreign Land Delightfully Worth Visiting

2010-09-05T06:03:00.000-06:00

Chatting Wednesday evening at the Farmer's Market with the leader of the mosque that used to be located down the street from the church, I asked about the old building, how their Middle Eastern grocery store across the street is doing, and how they are liking their new location -- a converted Masonic Lodge a mile or so away. After playfully chastising me for not coming to see it, and after I promised to do so, he invited Lori and me to be their guest for dinner some night this weekend when they broke fast. Muslims are beginning the final week of the month of Ramadan during which they fast from sun up to sun down, bridged by designated hours of prayer throughout the day and evening. After gathering at the mosque for a prayer service, they adjourn to the dining room downstairs for a meal that one of the members has prepared. By this time of the month, the time for fast breaking had moved up from close to 9:30 p.m. to just before 8:00 p.m. When I asked if there was a night he would suggest, or if there might be one we shouldn't attend, he checked with his wife who initially suggested we come on Saturday. "Saturday, Sunday or Monday," she said; "I know who is cooking those nights."

So, last night we opened the mosque door at 7:50 p.m. with the apprehension of ignorance and walked inside. Entering a vestibule of sorts, we were quickly sized up by some helpful members, after which Lori was quickly ushered downstairs with the other women (not to be seen again until we left) and I, after taking off my shoes as instructed, was led upstairs to the prayer room. In my tradition, the room would have been the sanctuary, except without pews or chairs. Worshipers stood in rows facing a certain direction -- stood, that is, until they bowed in keeping with the prayers being recited aloud by the leader; bowed, then stood upright, then kneeled, then prostrated, then kneeled, then stood, then bowed...repeat...etc. You get the idea. I wasn't the only visitor present, so we neophytes limped along together. I couldn't understand a word of what was being said, but I rather enjoyed the repetitive movement that had something in common with yoga; and if I couldn't understand their prayers, it was a meaningful opportunity to devote myself to my own.

The experience didn't last long. Perhaps 15 minutes after we had begun, we were led downstairs to what we would call the fellowship hall where tables were set up on at least the entered side of a movable wall that divided the room. Occasional sounds from the other side of the divider betrayed where the women of the community were eating. Plates were delivered; food was identified and described by Mike (in fact his name was considerably longer, but when he saw the helpless expression on my face, he suggested I call him "Mike") who had done all the cooking for the night. A widower perhaps in his early 60's, he was pleased he had managed to pull it off. "They told me to cook for 50," he recalled. Mike, who moved to the U.S. before the Revolution and the hostage crisis, then answered other questions we generated, along with Khalid, an Anglo man about my age, and Mohammed, the friend and leader whose invitation had brought us here. After dinner, Khalid showed us the washing area where the men purify themselves before prayers, and demonstrated the ritual -- the hands, the fingers, the mouth, the nose, the ears, the hair in a particular sequence and regimen -- and eventually led the other visitors and I back up to the vestibule, assuming that we weren't planning to join him back upstairs for the next round of prayers.

Meanwhile I was beginning to worry about Lori. Stripped apart as we walked in the door, I hadn't seen or heard from her in the past hour and a half. As I waited, the wives of the other visitors eventually appeared, but still no Lori. Khalid was needing to proceed on with his prayers, but he hustled back downstairs to see what he could learn. On his way back through he assured me that she was not only there but was on her way up. I'll admit that I was feeling protective...and responsible; I had no idea what had been going on with her through the evening, and I was ready with an apology. And then I saw her joyfully radiant face ascending the stairs in the company of two shrouded women to whom she promptly introduced me. They, she explained, had quickly taken her under their wing and guided and explained and answered questions. Fatima, a refugee from Somalia, and Mona, newly relocated to Des Moines for her husband's work, were both acquainted with the dynamics of dislocation -- with being the newcomer in an unfamiliar place -- and intuited Lori's need of a guide. The happy and affectionate chatter among them signaled that it had been a good evening.

Taking our leave, we reflected on the experience. Incredibly diverse, we had worshiped and dined with Africans, Iranians, Arabs, Pakistanis, Mexicans and Anglos. Looking around, one of my fellow visitors observed that he had to remind himself that he was in Des Moines. Seeing newcomers, members of the community had assumed our unfamiliarity and without instruction or designation took it upon themselves to guide us through. I thought how different all that was from our usual experience at church. There, a largely monochromatic body gathers together, and when visitors appear, our designated greeters say hello but otherwise assume that the guests know the ropes and leave them to their own resourcefulness.

So it was that we drove home nourished in more ways than one. More than tolerated, we had been welcomed and befriended and cared for -- served, in any number of ways. And while it still felt like a foreign land, it was one worth visiting as a tourist; and looking forward, perhaps, to visiting again.

A Few Blocks of Delight

2010-09-03T07:30:00.000-06:00

I suggested to the service department shuttle driver that he let me off at the stop sign several blocks away. Ostensibly it was to give him an easier time accessing the freeway he needed to drop off his other passenger, but the truth was that it is too pretty of a day not to spend at least a few minutes of it on the sidewalk. The door slid closed, the van glided away, and the neighborhood opened around me. Cool for these early days of September -- upper 50's according to the morning news -- the sun was nonetheless bright in the unblemished sky. A slight breeze animated a few leaves, but the limbs were still, and the birds were having a party of the morning.

Wood smoke was already wisping from Woody's chimney, the foretaste of today's barbecue filling the air. I'll not be getting there for lunch today, but the smell tempts me to rearrange my plans.

A squirrel explores the perimeter of a trash bin next to a house, seeking admission. Finding none, and annoyed by my interruption, he scurries off between the fence pickets toward the trees beyond. I meant him no malice, and was rather enjoying his diligence, so his exit was a minor disappointment.

A new member of the church -- an African immigrant/refugee who had spent years in a refugee camp before being separated from her husband and children and relocated to the U.S. -- was carrying her garbage to the curb. Her English is spotty, but smiles and waves are apparently universal vocabulary, and we even manage a reciprocal "good morning" before moving our separate ways. It feels good to make connection beyond the orderly confines of the pews, and to register mutual recognition.

Too soon, I arrive at the parking lot doors and withdraw the keys from my pocket. I could, I think to myself, just keep walking -- another block...or two...or three; it is, after all, still early. Instead, after one more deep breath and a wistful glance back over the neighborhood, I turn the lock and switch on the lights. The sermon inside my computer still searching for a conclusion won't find one on its own. And Sunday, as my Dad likes to say, "comes around with ruthless regularity."

Still, it was a nice walk, and a perfect beginning to the day. And I'm still reconsidering that barbecue. Maybe I'll call the service department and tell them not to hurry with car.

With Hands Out of the Way, the Mind Was Free to Wander

2010-08-30T16:36:00.001-06:00

I managed to arrive in time to get in on the last of the okra harvest for the morning. It was my second volunteer morning at Turtle Farm, and Ben and Angela were already closing in on the end of the last row by the time I arrived at 8 a.m. There is more to come, to be sure -- okra, it turns out, is prolific -- but the nubs we left on the woody stalks will have to wait for another day. At the end of the morning there were more raspberries to seek out and pluck off, though the rainy summer has not been kind to the bushes.

My major assignment for the morning, however, was garlic. "German Extra Hardy garlic" to be exact, one of the stiff neck varieties. Dug earlier in the summer, bundled and hung in the barn to dry, it was time to snip the stalks, trim the whiskery roots, and clean away the outer papers. And, of course, cull the rotted and unappealing. After my private tutorial, Ben and Angela and freshly arrived John headed off to a different part of the farm to pick summer squash. The farming neophyte, I remained behind, back of the shed with my scissors, clippers, stacked bunches and collecting bins.

The breeze was cool, the morning was quiet, the task was pleasantly manageable for a farmer's assistant equipped with my limited skill set, and there was something pleasantly meditative about the repetitive snipping and shedding. After awhile, the hands continue the steps by rote, leaving the mind...the spirit...to wander in any of a zillion directions -- at times analytically dissecting an issue; occasionally simply brooding enigmatically around and over an idea; sometimes simply lost in the morning's reverie. The process of thumbing away the dirty outer papers of the garlic kinesthetically mirrored in my hands the analogical work underway in my mind.

A part of the allium family -- whose siblings include onions, shallots, leeks and scallions -- garlic, as even in the most inattentive culinarian knows, is an intensely fragrant bulb segmented into cloves, whose fingertip residue is want to persist even through repeated scrubbings. Which, if you happen to like garlic, isn't all bad. The scent can be an inviting reminder of recipes carefully flavored, company lovingly fed, or in my case, farm labor affectionately contributed...

...and a mind loosed to wander without rein.

There is Something to be Said for That

2010-08-27T18:02:00.000-06:00

I don't get out very much. It was only last night, while nibbling a hamburger at our neighborhood picnic, that I learned about Glen Beck's planned rally tomorrow at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. -- mimicking Martin Luther King's famous moment almost 50 years ago. Beck claims he wants to "restore honor to Washington," and if he can accomplish that with a few speeches and a weekend God bless him. In fact, if he succeeds in Washington we might want to take him on tour, honor being an asset in short supply in any number of places around the country -- indeed, around the world.

Based on what I read of him, however, my expectations aren't very high -- and "what I read" is all I have to go on. I've never listened to more than a minute or so of him on the radio, and in that case he was holding himself out as a biblical scholar unencumbered with any apparent reading of it. So I'm not sure how much he ultimately knows about honor. He is pretty good at derision, put downs, condemnation, and insult; he seems to have a good and healthy pair of lungs, with a knack for hyperbole, half-truth, and specious generalization; and he definitely can draw an audience. But then anger, froth and excess volume always can.

But wisdom? Experience? Insight? And, of course, honor? Well, I can't say that I know too much about his credentials there. I do, however, know some things about the wisdom, experience, insight, education, imagination, and, yes, honor of Martin Luther King, and his dream about American life that still sounds and feels expansive and enlarging and ennobling, and by comparison Mr. Beck's "dream" seems a little picayune.

My neighbor beside me at the picnic table was voicing little use for this hypertensive radio personality, but I find one redeeming quality in Glenn Beck. With him making so much news in recent months, I hardly hear anything about Rush Limbaugh. And there is something to be said for that.

Content to Simply Be Christian

2010-08-23T15:15:00.000-06:00

"We are on our way home, too," she volunteered as we settled into our neighboring seats on the plane. "We had a foreign exchange student a few years ago who is now living in San Francisco that we were taking our grandsons to visit."

The truth, however, was more complicated -- and better -- than that. It turns out that this "foreign exchange student" was simply a young man that this woman and her husband met, once-upon-a-time in the Amsterdam airport while waiting for their common trans-Atlantic flight -- they, returning from a European vacation; he, on his way to college from Africa. He had earned a full scholarship to Drake, and since they live just over a half-hour away, they took him under their wings -- both on the remainder of that trip to Des Moines and for the several years he was a student in university housing.

And they took on this assignment in earnest. After visiting with the youth minister at the church in which they were active, they concluded that he was insufficiently open to non-caucasians; so they shopped around the area until they found one more inclusive -- in a completely different denomination, in a neighboring town a few miles away. They kept in touch, they took him to church, they fed him meals, they housed him during holiday dorm closures; and they celebrated with him when he graduated and accepted his first job as a pharmacist.

Little wonder that they continue to keep in touch. And visit. With their grandsons. Except that part doesn't turn out to be literally true, either. Only one of the teenage boys is actually their grandson. The other is simply a best friend of their grandson whom they welcomed along on the trip, so "for these few days he is a grandson as well," she asserted.

Well, of course. He was in good hands.

I am of the humble and often embarrassed mind that Christians persistently and deservedly have a less-than-desirable reputation. We can be pathetically small in our passions, and distractingly loud in our narrow-minded pettiness. We commonly pick silly fights while ignoring breathtaking injustices. In transformational matters where we should be taking the lead, we are often the last to begrudgingly tag along, having squandered our time instead preoccupied with trivialities of no enduring consequence. But here, in an accidental conversation where I most try to avoid them -- on an airplane, trapped for the duration of the flight beside a total stranger -- I was blessed by the matter-of-fact witness of the Gospel from a woman who had no idea she was being an evangelist. Without thinking it anything out of the ordinary or special, here was a woman who understands the Kingdom of God...

...and reflects it...

...and welcomes into it anyone who could use a place to stay.

She hardly used any "Jesus language" in the course of our conversation, but it was very clear that she had met him, and was determined to follow him. In contrast to all those who trumpet and grind others beneath the word, she seems perfectly happy to simply be...

...Christian.

How we Taste, and Why

2010-08-21T20:51:00.000-06:00

Sitting around the table at dinner, the young couple across the table raising two pre-school children talked about how much their kids pick up from them. Like sponges, they notice the profanity that erupts when a careless driver causes Mom to swerve; they notice that Dad is growing a garden, and ask "why" questions when their parents do this or that. "It is," I observed, "the human expression of terroir" -- taste of place; the "soil" of home imparting the flavor itself. We understand that kids learn what they live; we comprehend how they pick up the flavor of their environment. But for some reasons we doubt it when it comes to vegetables and congregations. Bizarre.

We began the day with greens -- various specialty leafy growths that Coger Farms produces for markets and restaurants like the Inn. They grow them year around -- with the exception of about 6-weeks in the dead of winter when the plants essentially shut down even in the greenhouses. We pulled leaves, sampled, and listened. We learned about the economic roulette these guys play, and the passion that keeps them in the game, despite the challenges.

We met with a Christine, a clergywoman serving as an interim minister of a church trying to transition from being a large, wealthy and prestigious church in a burgeoning town, to a hospitable congregation of ordinary people in a decayed town that bears little resemblance to its former self. Everyone we have talked with describes this town as suffering from depression, having gone from economic titan to a welfare city in just a couple of generations as technical manufacturing moved elsewhere. Nonetheless, Christine pointed out, "nothing is wasted in God's economy. Nothing is wasted."

Not even, at least as she sees it, the challenge and grief of a lost of past and a stripped endowment. "God has a use for it all." And I thought back to our May experience of touring Stone Barns near Tarrytown, New York, and how nothing, at least if they can help it, is wasted or lost -- not office paper, not grass, not manure, not the compost-generated heat, not the residual bones from slaughter. Everything is re-utilized. The by-product and waste of one process becomes the raw material of the next process. "Nothing is wasted in God's economy." Nothing, including personal and corporate experiences of gain and loss, scarcity and abundance, power but also weakness, accomplishment and loss, vibrance but also grief.

We met Frank whose hobby is raising cattle -- the only one of our visits who seems to have any money, though he made his elsewhere, doing other things. And he tried to downplay his connection to the cows, but he wasn't very convincing. Despite his buying and breeding and selling and butchering, he knows those cows on a first-name basis, and their progeny on the tip of his tongue. Frank is clearly paying attention, and caring.

And tonight we ate. Well. And along with the eating, tried to explain to those seated around us why we four clergymen are here. And it's funny; though people may never have heard of the French word "terroir," there is something instinctually graspable about the concept that instantly rings true. Environment matters. We neglect where we are at our own peril. Place -- whether it be the farm place or the homeplace -- is important. Generalities ultimately only matter in their specificity. We aren't, after all, abstractions.

"Do you have a business card or something," the woman across the table asked, and Alan managed to oblige; "I'd like to feel some connection," she explained.

Which, of course, is part of the point -- connection, and location, and figuring out and celebrating the glorious ways that we fit in. And how it is that we taste. And why.

Where...and With Whom

2010-08-20T21:21:00.001-06:00

On this first full day of our second farm expedition, our group followed an early breakfast with a visit to a small artisanal cheese maker here in eastern Vermont. Our timing was fortuitous because their consultant from the French Alps was on site, supervising the operation. We watched the two copper cauldrons filled with curds and whey stir; we saw the mixture shift to the draining and pressing equipment, and followed the progression of cutting and transferring the blocks of compressed curds into the forms that over the next 12 months will become their unique style of cow's milk cheese. Afterward, sampling some of the finished product with Jeremy, the chief cheesemaker, and Eric, the consultant, we heard about the variant flavors of cheese made from spring milk verses summer or fall milk; we learned about the importance of which hillside the cows are grazing -- and when -- and the vicissitudes of the weather and the various other factors influencing the taste and the quality of the cheese. Some of the conversation had alluded to "industrial" cheese and "artisanal" cheese, and I asked for their description of the difference.

After only a moment's consideration, Eric responded that "industrial cheese conforms the milk to the process, while artisanal cheese conforms the process to the cheese." Because, we learned, the milk is different everyday; and these guys are far more interested in the milk and the cheese to which it leads than they are their procedural routines.

Mid-day, Willis Wood described their family's experience over the past 150 years making apple cider every October and maple syrup every spring. You have to keep measuring and monitoring because every year the moisture content is different -- as is the sugar content -- and so you have to vary the process to accommodate the fruit and the sap.

When, at the end of the afternoon, we supervised the milking of 20 Jersey cows and talked at length with Lisa, the proprietess of this small dairy farm, we were hardly surprised when she independently stated essentially the same process. "Everyday I remind myself that if I disappeared, they would still be dairy cows, but if they disappeared, I would no longer be a dairy farmer." The cows -- their health, their happiness, their comfort and sense of security -- are the biggest part of the dairy equation. "That helps me keep my perspective," she mused. And her cows did, indeed, look delightfully happy. The truth is that, apart from that whole milking problem, we would have been ready to volunteer to be her cows.

And so we heard afresh how it is that where a thing is of critical importance, plus the passionate care of those who are there alongside you stirring, pressing, condensing, tapping and milking. They are critically important too.